


Listen

by dunklenacht310



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Bottom Harry, Gay Sex, Ghosts and Spirits, Graphic Description, M/M, Mystery, Paranormal, Psychiatric Hospital AU, Psychological Horror, Thriller, Top Zayn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-15
Updated: 2021-01-13
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:01:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 23,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28088928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dunklenacht310/pseuds/dunklenacht310
Summary: **On Temporary Hiatus**“What’s upstairs, at the end of the corridor?” Harry asks Zayn as they climb the stairs.Zayn shrugs. “The abandoned east wing,” he says. “It's been abandoned for ages. Why?”Harry shakes his head. “Nothing. I thought I heard something coming from that direction, earlier.”Zayn hums. “Maybe the sex made you hallucinate,” he winks. “Or maybe there are ghosts around the building.”orHarry is the new psychiatrist at St. Catherine's hospital. His main patient, Louis, has been there for a while,  but Harry hasn't come to a diagnosis yet, and he doesn't really know where the voices Louis hears come from. Everything would still be fine if Harry didn't find nurse Malik one day, talking to the same voices in the hospital.
Relationships: Zayn Malik/Harry Styles
Comments: 47
Kudos: 76





	1. Afraid

**Author's Note:**

> **Warning:**  
>  This story deals/mentions the theme of mental illness. Reader discretion is advised.  
> Some descriptions will be violent and/or disturbing (but the violence WILL NOT be sexual). The general themes are listed in the tags.
> 
> **Author's message**  
>  It's been almost a year, but as promised, I come back with new stories!  
> I've missed you all dearly, and I sincerely hope all of you guys are doing ok in these very difficult times. I'm probably not going to be as quick in updating as I was before, but I promise to stick to a chapter-per-week schedule, and I hope my stories are going to bring you all at least a moment of happiness.
> 
> For now I think that the total number of chapters of this story is going to be 7, but it's still a work in progress, so this number may change. However, it's not going to be more than 10.

“How long have you worked here at the hospital, doc? One, two months?” Louis asks with a smirk. He’s lying down on the couch in Harry’s office, as it happens now twice a week, and he’s staring at the ceiling with big, bloodshot eyes.

Harry clears his throat. “Three months, Louis,” he replies. “Why are you asking?”

“Three months,” Louis sighs. “And you’ve never heard them. Not even once.”

“Who are _they_?” Harry asks.

Louis chuckles. “The same _they_ as every time we speak, doc. Niall and Liam. I hear them all the time. They’re _here_ , you know. They tell me stuff.”

“What kind of stuff?”

Louis laughs. “I’m not supposed to tell you. It’s a secret. Or, well, not a secret. But you already think I’m crazy.”

“I don’t think anyone’s crazy, Louis,” Harry replies as patiently as he knows how. “The reason why I chose this job is exactly that I don’t think ‘being crazy’ is a thing.”

Louis snorts a laugh. “So Maya in room 34, who peels off the wallpaper from the walls and fucking _eats_ it, she’s perfectly fine?”

Harry sighs. How does Louis even _know_ about Maya? “Having a mental illness doesn’t mean being crazy,” he answers.

“Oh, wonderful,” Louis sighs. “And what’s mine, doc? Am I a schizo? Or paranoid? Do I just have good old boring PTSD? All of the above?”

Harry sighs too. _I don’t fucking know what your problem is yet, Louis_ , he wishes he could reply. “Let’s not worry about this for now, Louis,” he says instead. “But you can trust me, you know. So if you wanna tell me what Niall and Liam are telling you, you can.”

Louis finally turns his head and stares at Harry in the eyes, for what feels like a short eternity. “Most of the time they just scream and I can’t make out the words,” he says at last, in barely a whisper.

Harry nods. “Why do you think they’re screaming?”

“They’re trapped here. In this world. And in this building.”

That’s more than Harry has managed to get out of Louis in the last three months, so he notes it down, making sure he doesn’t look frantic even though he kinda thinks this is a _huge_ step forward. _Niall, Liam. He thinks they’re trapped in this world. He’s conscious they’re dead._

“What are you writing?” Louis asks, sitting down on the couch. “You never write.”

 _‘Cause you never give me much to note down. But now you did._ “Trapped in this world?” Harry asks quietly, ignoring Louis’s question. “As in… they’re ghosts?”

Louis chuckles. “Sort of. More like spirits. You can write that down too, doc. ‘Louis Tomlinson, 32. Diagnosis: a fucking medium’. Whatcha think?” he snickers.

Harry chuckles too. “I don’t believe in ghosts, Louis. Do you?”

“Nope. Don’t need to _believe_. I _know_ they’re here.”

Harry opens his mouth to reply. Louis seems particularly at ease today, and Harry wants to try and push it just a little bit more. _He’s always talked about Niall and Liam as though they’re voices in his head. Today, they’re ghosts. Something’s changing. Maybe his delusion is evolving. Or maybe it was_ this _from the start, but he’s paranoid enough that he never trusted me enough to tell me. But I’m getting to him. I’m gonna get to the bottom of this._

Harry never speaks, because right that moment there’s a knock on the door, and the moment he so difficultly built with Louis is ruined. Louis’s eyes shoot open, and he retreats in a corner of the couch, the one farthest from the door, hugging his knees to his chest in a clear closing off gesture.

Harry almost, _almost_ curses out loud. What the fuck do they think they’re doing in that hospital, interrupting a psychiatry session like that?

He doesn’t say anything to Louis, but he tries to send him a reassuring glance as he stands up and goes for the door.

The man on the threshold is wearing a nurse’s uniform, and he’s one of the fittest blokes Harry’s ever seen, with big caramel eyes, long eyelashes, perfect cheekbones and pitch-black hair. But Harry can’t exactly care about _that_ right now. “I’m in the middle of a session,” he says as brusquely as he can, staring at the nurse. _Malik_ , reads his tag. “And you just ruined three months of work,” he adds in a whisper.

The nurse grimaces, but then school his face back into neutrality, and straightens his back. “Well then, next time you decide to change your session schedule on a whim, make sure to inform the afternoon nurse, which is _me_ , so that we can also change the patient’s medication schedule accordingly,” he retorts, barely audible. “This shit they’re taking needs to be assumed at specific times or it’ll fuck them up, so I couldn’t wait for you to be done. Here, make sure he takes it,” nurse Malik adds, thrusting a small plastic container with two pills in Harry’s hand, and gesturing with his head towards Louis.

It’s partially true, Harry has to admit. He didn’t think to tell the afternoon nurse that he was going to have a special session with Louis at five, and he should have remembered that Louis takes his meds at six. Harry can even appreciate the nurse’s concern about Louis’s meds schedule getting fucked up, because it’s true. The medication is very heavy, and it needs to be assumed regularly, always at the same time, or it’ll fuck Louis up rather than help him.

Louis heaves a big, theatrical sigh from the couch. “Are you done flirting? That’s very unprofessional, doc. I thought we were having a moment,” he declares. “And you, Zayn. How dare you interrupt us like this?”

Harry doesn’t have time to even reply. Zayn arches an eyebrow at Harry and then takes back Louis’s meds, inviting himself inside the office. “Hello, Louis. Be a good lad and take your meds, yeah?”

Harry has to do his best not to gape, because as Zayn approaches Louis, Louis’s defensive demeanour changes. His legs elongate until he’s sitting in a normal position, and even though he’s shaking his head like he wants to refuse the medication, he doesn’t look worried or scared.

_He trusts this nurse._

Louis is still shaking his head. “No, please, Zayn, I don’t want it. Niall and Liam scream louder when I take it, please, it fries my fucking brain.”

Zayn shushes him. “I know, I know. But you have to take it, Lou, yeah? It’ll make you feel better in the long run.”

“Are you sure?” Louis asks, almost pleading. “I’m not crazy, Zayn, I don’t think I need the meds anymore. Doc? Can you tell him what you said earlier? That I’m not crazy?” he adds, looking at Harry.

Harry sighs. “You’re not crazy, Louis. But you need the meds. You trust me and Zayn, don’t you? We would never give you anything to hurt you.”

Louis takes a couple of breaths, but eventually he seems to really believe Harry, because he takes the small plastic cup with the pills from Zayn’s hand, and obediently gulps them down with some water, even showing his tongue to Zayn afterwards so that he can check that he really swallowed them.

Zayn smiles. “Good lad,” he says. “I’ll leave you to your session now. Sorry I interrupted.”

Louis grins, his eyes already a bit hooded because of the meds. “And sorry for flirting with my shrink, you mean,” he slurs. Harry curses a bit internally, because he knows the side effect of Louis’s meds is sleepiness, so they haven’t got much time left for today.

“Not flirting. He was actually scolding me,” Zayn replies.

“Nah. He’s checking you out right now,” Louis stage-whispers, and Harry almost pops a coronary as he immediately averts his gaze.

Not that he was _really_ checking Malik out. It’s just that he’s really, really handsome. And Harry might be a bit sex-deprived. Just a bit.

Zayn doesn’t comment on that, and neither does Harry.

Before any of them can say anything, they all hear an extremely loud crash coming from somewhere at the end of the corridor. Louis whimpers and retreats in his corner of the couch again, again hugging his legs to his chest, and a moment later Harry curses the fact that he never managed to close the door of his office again, because one more person shows up.

“Is everything alright here? I heard screams,” a voice of a woman announces.

It’s Sandra Haynes, head physician of the hospital and head of the oncology department, and really, Harry should just kick everybody out. “Yes,” he says stiffly, one hand already on the door. “I’m in the middle of a session, and my patient needs _quiet_.”

Doctor Haynes doesn’t seem to give a shit about what he just said, and she sticks her head in the door anyway.

That’s when Louis starts to panic.

He grabs Zayn by the hem of his nurse coat, with his eyes absurdly big in his face, and he shakes uncontrollably. “Zayn, Zayn, I can’t, the noise, it’s Niall and Liam, they don’t like this, can’t you hear them, I’m not crazy, they’re…”

“Do you need help, doctor Styles?” doctor Haynes asks, frowning.

“I need you to get out right now,” Harry replies, not caring if he’s being rude to a colleague, and he shuts the door in her face, immediately turning to Louis and Zayn shushing him.

Louis seems to calm down a little when he realizes there’s just Zayn and Harry with him, and his body slowly relaxes, while his breath evens out even more slowly.

None of them speaks for a moment.

“Louis?” Harry says at last. “We’re done for today. Nurse Malik will bring you back to your room, okay?”

Louis nods. Zayn doesn’t say a word as he helps Louis stand up and gently guides him towards the door. “Doc?” Louis says when they’re on the threshold.

Harry raises his eyes from his single line of notes. “Yes?”

“You really can’t hear them, can you?”

Harry smiles. “That doesn’t matter. Next time you can tell me what _you_ hear, Louis.”

Louis sighs. “Yeah,” he just says, and nurse Malik brings him away.

Harry’s been in the break room for an hour already, nursing a cup of coffee which has gone cold ages ago, and he knows he should eventually remove his coat and go home, but he can’t find the will right now.

He stares at the note he took during his session with Louis earlier, and sighs for the umpteenth time. _He thinks they’re ghosts. He’s conscious they’re dead._

There’s always been something nagging at Harry, with Louis, since he started treating him three months earlier, when Harry had been hired in the hospital as a psychiatrist.

He’s had his fair share of practice, even though these are his first months working solo. With his former supervisor, Harry has treated many different kinds of mental illnesses. And never, not even once, did it take him this long to have a diagnosis. With Louis, Harry hasn’t gotten to a sure diagnosis yet.

 _Am I a schizo? Or paranoid? Do I have good, old, boring PTSD? All of the above?_ , Louis has asked that afternoon.

Harry doesn’t know, and it’s starting to bother him so much that he can’t stop thinking about it, not even when his shift is over and he goes home, where he should _not_ think about his job.

He jolts when he hears another loud crash coming from upstairs. He wishes everybody would be a little more careful in that hospital. Most of his patients are extremely bothered by loud, sudden noises. He still doesn’t think that it’s the best idea, to have a psychiatry wing right in the middle of a hospital, so close to all the other wings from which noises and _things_ can be heard by the patients.

But the hospital is huge, and it’s not like Harry can do anything about its structure. He’s been already lucky enough to even be hired. He’s never worked in a hospital before. He’s not used yet to how things work there. The chaos, the stench of medicine and death, and even the whole having colleagues thing. When he worked as an assistant therapist in a psychiatrist’s studio, he only had his boss to deal with.

Now that he’s on his own, and he doesn’t have enough money to open his own studio, the hospital is as good as it gets, and he has to learn to deal with it.

He’s already looked for doctor Haynes and apologized for being rude earlier. She’s a nice woman, and she probably gets how still not at ease Harry is in the whole hospital setting, because she hasn’t taken it personally. She’s even apologized herself, for having interrupted his session out of concern for Louis’s screams.

He hears someone shout upstairs, and he feels an ugly shiver run down his spine. He even stands up, but then shakes his head and forces himself to sit down again, remembering what his supervisor, doctor Barnes, taught him when he was still just an assistant. _Don’t let them get to your head, Harry. You can care about your patients. But once your day at work is done, you_ can’t _let them in anymore. Go out of the studio, and let it go. Unwind, and resume your work the next day._

“You didn’t tell me it would be this hard, though,” he tells Barnes, even though his old boss is thousands of miles away, back to the States where he was originally from.

He’s almost deciding to finally go home, when the door of the break room opens quietly, and someone enters it with a heavy sigh. It’s the fit nurse from that afternoon, Malik.

Harry braces himself, because he has one more apology to deliver, apparently. So he opens his mouth, but Malik—Zayn—is quicker. “Oh, doctor Styles,” he says, clearing his throat. “I, um, I looked for you in your office but you weren’t there, so I guessed you’d already gone home. I wanted to apologize for earlier today. I really would have never interrupted a patient’s session with you if I had another choice.”

Harry is a bit surprised, but he doesn’t let it show. “It’s alright, nurse Malik. I also apologize. For, um, being rude in general.”

“Did I… did I really ruin all your work with Louis?” Zayn asks, a bit tentatively.

Harry shakes his head. “No, not really. He was just… opening up a little bit more. And then he retreated again when you knocked. So I got a bit frustrated, but I shouldn’t have taken it out on you. You were just doing your job.”

Malik nods, sighing. “I’m sorry. I’ve known Louis for a year, since he… was admitted here. I know it can be a bit intense, working with him. Some days are good, but others are extremely bad, innit.”

Harry nods too, lowering his eyes to his notepad. “I wish I knew why. I should have a diagnosis by now. But I’m afraid I don’t,” he confesses. He shouldn’t be doing this. He doesn’t have anyone to report to about Louis’s conditions, and besides, it’s very unprofessional of him to talk about a patient, even if he’s just talking to another person who works in the hospital. But Harry’s been so frustrated lately that he just _needs_ to say something about it.

Zayn sighs. “Well, doctor Styles, you already have more results than our last psychiatrist anyway, God rest her soul.”

“What do you mean?” Harry asks, frowning.

Zayn shrugs. “Louis trusts you. He, like… sometimes he talks to me a little, tells me stuff. And today he told me that you’re a good one and he feels a bit less of a nutcase when he talks to you,” he says. “I mean, granted, he then also added that maybe soon enough you’ll finally hear Liam and Niall as well, but… what I mean is that he trusts you, even in his delusion. He never said anything about Liam and Niall to old doctor Perez, or to anyone else for that matter. That has to be something, right?”

Harry chuckles. “Yeah. Wait, you said that he never talks about Niall and Liam?”

Zayn shakes his head. “Never. He mentions them to me, and today I understood that he talks freely about them with you. But whenever he talks to other people, he just talks about hearing voices.”

Harry hums. Louis told Harry earlier that day that it’s a secret. Maybe that detail is more important than what Harry originally thought, so he notes it down. _A secret?_ , he writes.

Zayn doesn’t comment on that, but he speaks again nonetheless. “I can’t even imagine what the poor lad’s gone through. Being in such a terrible car crash and watching his best friends die, when he barely got a scratch.”

Harry could point out that Louis might not have been physically hurt in the crash a year earlier, but he got quite a huge mental disorder from that, but he gets what Zayn means, so he nods. “Yeah. He never talks about the crash, though. Until today I didn’t even have the certainty that he was conscious his friends are dead.”

“Baby steps, doctor Styles,” Zayn replies.

“You can call me Harry,” Harry decides before he can second-guess himself.

Zayn smiles. “Okay. Harry. I’m Zayn. Nice to meet you,” he says, and then ducks behind the door leading to the locker room, closing the door while he probably changes. He keeps speaking to Harry, though. “So, Harry, why are you sulking in this shitty break room when your shift has been over for more than an hour?” he asks, almost shouting.

Harry chuckles, and another loud banging coming from the floor above almost deafens him. “Jesus Christ,” he mutters. “You’ve been in this hospital way longer than me, nurse Malik, are all these noises normal at night?” he can’t help but ask.

Zayn comes out of the locker room wearing a grey sweater and black skinny jeans, tying his hair in a topknot, and frowning. “What did you say? Sorry, I closed the door so I couldn’t hear you.”

“I asked if all these noises are normal at night,” Harry sighs.

“I didn’t hear anything,” Zayn answers. “This locker room is fucking soundproof, I swear. Now I understand why doctor Olsen and nurse Parker always fuck in there.”

Harry gapes. “Olsen from radiology and nurse Parker working in paediatrics?”

Zayn snickers. “You’ve been here three months already, doc. You should know all the gossip by now.”

Harry rolls his eyes. “I haven’t exactly had time to socialize and get updates, nurse Malik.”

“You can call me Zayn,” Zayn grins, unperturbed. “What were you saying about noises?”

Harry sighs and shakes his head. “I just heard noises from upstairs, I don’t know. Do you think we should go and che…”

“Nope,” Zayn replies surely. “The night nurses are good at their job, they’ll make sure everything’s fine. Night nurses are the best, and I say so with all my pride, seeing that I was one of them until yesterday.”

“Oh. That’s why I haven’t seen you before,” Harry realizes.

“Yep. I love having night shifts, but hospital rules say that the maximum of night shifts you can have is three consecutive months, and then you gotta have at least another three months of ‘normal’ shifts,” Zayn explains mimicking inverted commas in the air and rolling his eyes. “Something to do with mental health on the job or summat, you tell me, you’re the shrink.”

Harry nods. “Yes. Prolonged night shifts can mess up a person’s sleep schedule, even irreparably. And that can cause sleep disorders, anxiety, even hallucinations and…”

Zayn grins and leans towards Harry, pressing a hand on the table at which Harry’s still sitting. “Too many details. You’re ruining the romance of being in a deserted, silent hospital by yourself all night, reading in peace and drinking a shitton of coffee while nobody can scold you about it,” he declares with another grin, and when has Zayn’s face gotten so close to Harry’s?

Harry gulps down. “Uh, sorry, I guess? By the way, too much caffeine isn’t gonna keep you awake. It’ll only give you a heart attack,” he points out, straining his neck to keep looking at Zayn’s perfect facial features.

Zayn chuckles. “You didn’t answer my first question.”

“What was it? You talked a lot.”

“Fair,” Zayn laughs. “I asked you why you’re sitting here when you should have gone home ages ago.”

Harry shrugs, closing his notepad at last, and standing up so that Zayn won’t be towering over him anymore. Not that he wasn’t enjoying it. “I was just… thinking, I guess.”

Zayn hums. “Well, now’s the time to stop. First thing they taught me in med school. You can care about your patients, but once your shift’s over…”

“You _can’t_ let them in anymore, and you gotta let it go. Unwind and resume the next day,” Harry finishes for him.

Zayn nods. “Yeah,” he smiles.

“It’s extremely difficult, sometimes. But you’re right. I’m gonna stop thinking about work right now,” Harry declares, taking a deep breath and then releasing it. “Also ‘cause I gotta worry about my dinner. I might have forgotten to shop groceries yesterday,” he adds, almost talking to himself.

Zayn chuckles. “Well, I can’t let our brand new shrink starve now, can I?” he says. “Let’s go, doc. I’ve got a _ton_ of food and a free evening. And you still need that update about hospital gossip.”

Harry blinks, but he’s not mental, so he doesn’t protest, and follows Zayn out of the hospital.

“So you’re telling me that Olsen and Parker have been fucking for _three years_ and neither his wife nor her husband know?” Harry almost shrieks.

Zayn laughs and nods, serving Harry another glass of wine. The bottle is almost empty, and all the food is already gone. “Yep,” Zayn confirms. “There’s been a moment in which we thought we were about to witness a fucking soap opera tragedy last year, when they were both ‘on their break’ and both the husband _and_ the wife showed up to bring them lunch.”

“Jesus.”

“But then nurse Hollands took pity on the two fuckers and gave them a heads up, so nothing happened. The four of them had lunch in the break room, _together_ , and I don’t think the two spouses ever realized just how awkward the whole thing was. We thought the big scare would make Olsen and Parker tune it down, but next morning they were going at it in the locker room like the day before never happened, bright and early. I walked in on them at the end of my night shift.”

“Oh, God,” Harry sighs, but he can’t help the giggle escaping his lips. “So they’re _still_ fucking?”

“Like rabbits. Neither of them looks at me in the face anymore though,” Zayn snickers.

Maybe it’s the wine, even though Harry hasn’t drunk _that_ much, or maybe it’s just the easy way in which Zayn has brought him to his place and cooked him dinner. Either way, Harry can’t stop staring at Zayn. He’s really, really _fit_ , and for a moment Harry imagines himself and Zayn fucking in the locker room, instead of Olsen and Parker.

Not that he would ever be so inconsiderate on the job, but it’s a fantasy, so everything’s allowed.

He realizes that conjuring those images while he’s sitting right in front of Zayn isn’t the best idea, because his brain barely gets to the part where they’re both in the locker room, hastily getting undressed, and he’s already filling up in his jeans. _Stop thinking stop thinking stop thinking_ , he pleads with himself.

“You okay?” Zayn asks, but there’s the ghost of a smirk on his lips.

Harry nods and clears his throat. “Yeah. Just thinking.”

Zayn stands up. “You think too much,” he declares, grabbing the empty plates and taking them to the sink, where he gently drops them.

Harry clears his throat again, and stands up to help Zayn with the rest of the items still on the table. “It’s my job,” he answers.

Zayn chuckles and hums.

Once the table is empty and clean, Harry takes it as his cue to leave. “I guess I’ll, uh, head home now. Thanks for dinner, Zayn.”

Zayn abruptly turns from the sink and faces Harry, with something _wicked_ in his gaze, and his arms crossed over his chest. “Or you could stay.”

Harry blinks. “Stay?”

Zayn chuckles again and slowly covers the distance between them, until he’s right in Harry’s space, their faces so close Harry has to hold his breath, afraid it smells too much like wine. “Yeah,” Zayn almost whispers. “Stay. You didn’t drink that much, but you still drank. It’s not safe for you to drive.”

Harry gulps down, trying to calm down his traitorous dick. _He’s just being considerate and responsible, get a fucking grip_. “Oh,” he murmurs dumbly.

Zayn grins. “And also, I’d very much like to fuck your brains out. If you agree.”

Harry almost chokes on his own spit, and he’s sure that he legit _squeals_ at Zayn’s words. Zayn, on his part, seems unperturbed, and he just keep smiling angelically, like he didn’t just suggest they have sex.

“Oh,” Harry says again, even more dumbly. “Did I, um, did I hear that right?”

Zayn grins and nods. “Yes, doctor Styles. I suggested that I fuck your brains out, if you agree.”

Harry isn’t mental, cheers, so he nods energetically, knowing he must look like a fool, but not exactly caring at that point. “Yeah, uh, yes. I definitely agree,” he confirms.

Zayn chuckles. “Good. Now help me with the dishes. They ain’t gonna wash themselves.”

Just like that, Zayn gets out of Harry’s personal space and starts doing the dishes, and Harry helps him. They make a little bit of small talk while they clean everything, and it’s so natural and easy that Harry starts to wonder if he just imagined the moment earlier, when Zayn was politely suggesting they fuck.

He’s almost starting to think that yes, he’s imagined it, when the dishes are finally done and Zayn stares at him with another wicked smile. Harry doesn’t have time to do much else, before Zayn is in his space again, kissing him.

Harry hasn’t been with anyone in so, so long. He hasn’t had time, not after finishing his traineeship period and being thrown into working solo so soon, with Barnes going away and the hospital hiring him. Sex hasn’t exactly been at the top of his priority list, lately. So snogging Zayn is all it takes for him to be well on his way to rock-hard, and he’s a bit ashamed about it, and a bit turned on too, obviously.

Zayn’s lips taste like the vegetable soup they ate, wine, and cigarettes, even though he hasn’t smoked once since they got to his place. Harry doesn’t have time to properly taste them as he wants, though, because Zayn interrupts the kiss and looks at Harry in the eyes, all traces of laughter and playfulness gone from his face, replaced by a small frown. “Harry? You wanna do this, right? It’s like, okay if you don’t feel like it. We don’t have to.”

Harry almost kicks himself in the bollocks, because of course Zayn would mistake his internal monologue for hesitation. “No no no! I want to. Very much. I was just…”

“Thinking,” Zayn finishes for him. “I know. But I just wanna make sure. If you don’t feel like it, we can just go back to being colleagues. And friends, we’re definitely friends now that I’ve fed you. The sex was just to have fun, yeah? It’s not necessary, and it doesn’t mean anything, so we can just forget about it if you want.”

Harry doesn’t wanna forget about it, because Zayn’s fit, and fun, and apparently also very thoughtful, and Harry’s still hard in his jeans. And for once he wants to do _something_ about it, something that is not just having a sad wank alone in his shitty apartment.

So he takes a breath, and instead of replying, he kisses Zayn again. “I’ll stop thinking right now,” he declares on Zayn’s lips.

Zayn snorts a laugh, and it’s not exactly pretty, except it’s Zayn, so of course everything he does is pretty. They laugh a bit while they snog again, but soon their hands are roaming on each other’s body, and they stop laughing, too busy opening their mouths and sucking on each other’s tongue to do anything else.

Zayn starts to lightly push Harry backwards, and Harry goes easily, letting Zayn direct him until they’re stumbling inside what probably is Zayn’s bedroom. Harry doesn’t know because he doesn’t have time to look around before Zayn’s on him again, pushing him more forcefully. He lands sitting on a bed, bouncing a couple of times, and Zayn chuckles, hastily removing his clothes with his eyes always trained on Harry, who takes the hint and starts doing the same.

Soon, they’re both naked on the bed, Zayn straddling Harry while his fingers trace the ink on Harry’s chest, stomach and hips. “Didn’t know you had tattoos,” Zayn murmurs, his breath a bit laboured.

Harry chuckles. “I don’t exactly show my ink at work,” he replies, running his hands up Zayn’s arms, over Zayn’s own sleeves of tattoos. “I like yours.”

“First hospital I applied for didn’t hire me ‘cause of the ink,” Zayn shrugs. “Good thing St. Catherine’s doesn’t care about it, or we’d both be unemployed.”

Harry laughs. “Yeah, that’s why I never had the guts to tattoo my hands or any place that is visible when I wear my work clothes. I always thought they would eventually be a pro…” he doesn’t manage to finish, because Zayn grins and kisses him again, chuckling on his mouth while he does so.

Harry doesn’t find it in his heart to be offended that Zayn so blatantly shut him up, though, because then Zayn rocks his hips, and their hard dicks slide against each other, and the friction is already so fucking good that Harry can’t suppress a groan.

Zayn seems to enjoy the sound, because he looks at Harry in the eyes and bucks his hips again, and Harry feels his eyes already roll back in his head as he lets out another quite embarrassing moan.

Zayn chuckles. “You’re a sensitive one, doc, ain’t you.”

Harry incredibly manages to clear his throat and speak in a normal voice, even though his last braincells are exploding because of how aroused he’s getting. “It’s just… been a while.”

Zayn hums, and wraps a hand around both their dicks, his thumb slowly tracing Harry’s slit. “Then don’t worry, doc. I’ll make it worth the wait.”

When Harry opens his eyes the next morning, he feels sore everywhere, even muscles he didn’t even remember he had. It’s a good kind of soreness, though, he thinks with a small chuckle as he turns in Zayn’s bed, settling on his back and staring at the ceiling.

 _I had a one-night stand_ , he thinks. _I always thought I wasn’t a one-night stand kind of person, and yet I went and had one. What does it mean? Does it even mean anything?_

“I swear to God, if you don’t stop thinking so loudly I’ll kill you,” Zayn mutters.

Harry starts a little, even though he should have _known_ Zayn would still be there. It’s _his_ bedroom, after all. When he turns to actually look at Zayn, he finds him bed-tousled, looking all kinds of soft even though there’s a grin on his lips. “Sorry. Good morning,” Harry says.

Zayn chuckles. “Good morning. Did you sleep well?”

 _After the way you fucked me three times in a row, I passed the fuck out, of course._ “Yeah,” he only replies. “Thanks for, um, letting me stay.”

Zayn is still grinning. “I doubted you could have stood on your own legs, after last night.”

Harry feels his face warm up, but he laughs anyway. “Yeah. I… I had fun. It was fun.”

“It was,” Zayn agrees with a sigh, stretching a little bit. The covers fall off his chest, exposing the expanse of it, full of tattoos and looking smooth and _climbable_.

So, because Harry doesn’t know if they’ll have another night like the last, he decides to take one last advantage of it, and moves to straddle Zayn, his lips immediately going for one of his nipples.

Zayn emits a surprised sigh, but one of his hands goes to card through the hair on the back of Harry’s head. Harry feels Zayn hard in between his legs, and gives an experimental grind of his hips.

Zayn groans. “Fuck, haven’t been this hard in the morning for ages,” he comments. “I guess that’s what you do to me, doc. Always have.”

Harry frowns, and he can’t help grinding his hips into Zayn’s again, but he also raises his head to look at him in the face. “Always have?”

Zayn chuckles and nods. “I should be mildly offended that you didn’t notice me before yesterday, but as for what concerns _me_ , I’ve noticed you alright since the very first day you started working at St. Catherine’s.”

“Really? How?”

Zayn’s hands slide down Harry’s sides, stopping just over the curve of his arse, and pushing so that their dicks get some more friction against each other. Harry groans, but still waits for a reply. “You always went out of the hospital right when I was going in to start my night shift. That’s how I saw you.”

“Oh. I… I never saw you.”

“Because you don’t exactly ‘let it go and resume the next day’ right when your shifts end, doc,” Zayn remarks, and it’s maybe more serious than what the grin still on his face would imply. “You were too busy _thinking_.”

Harry, despite the arousal and the good-natured scolding, laughs. “I’ll stop thinking right the fuck now,” he assures.

“Good,” Zayn sighs, giving Harry’s arse another push and making them both heave another groan. “Because the only thing I want you to think about right now is the next few hours, in which you’re gonna ride my dick.”

“ _Hours_?” Harry almost squeals, and his cock gives a traitorous twitch at the thought.

Zayn chuckles. “Yep, doc. Hours.”

Harry thanks God that it’s a Saturday and they both have their day off, because he soon realizes Zayn means it, when he says _hours_.

+

“I thought you were so tight just ‘cause it had been a long time,” Zayn pants in Harry’s ear, “but you’re always gonna be this tight, ain’t you.”

Harry doesn’t even reply. He just moans, because right that moment, Zayn thrusts more forcefully into him, hitting his prostate dead-on, and Harry’s hand finds purchase on the locker in front of him, making it rattle.

Harry squeezes his mouth shut, because what if someone _hears_ them? Are they gonna become the new Olsen and Parker of the hospital? Except that, well, they’re not cheating on anybody. Just being extremely reckless on their workplace.

Zayn is fucking Harry from behind, hard and fast, his hands holding Harry’s in place on the cold metal of the locker in front of them, and Harry would very much like to say that he never imagined ending up fucking in the locker room before the start of their shift, except that he saw it coming as soon as they both entered the room, and then Zayn locked the door with his wicked grin directed at Harry.

They’ve been going at it for two weeks already. Harry feels like they started fucking that Friday night, and then they never actually stopped. Which is the complete and utter truth. It’s like they never have enough. Not even enough to manage to restrain themselves now that they’re at work, and their shift starts in fifteen minutes, and anybody could show up.

Zayn’s low chuckle in his ear makes Harry shiver, almost bodily. “Doc?” he says, in a warning tone.

Harry chuckles too, and nods frantically. “I’ll stop thinking. Right now,” he assures.

“Good lad,” Zayn compliments him, and bucks his hips even harder, making Harry’s whole body—and the locker—rattle.

Harry pants audibly, his lips not sealed anymore. How’s he supposed to _stay quiet_ if Zayn has learned to locate his spot in three fucking seconds, and he keeps just slamming into it so hard?

They haven’t even undressed. They just have their jeans opened, and yet Harry can hear the sound of their hips meeting, and it’s so hot it’s almost enough to make him come.

It’s about then that Harry hears something else, though.

There’s a loud bang coming from upstairs, the sound of metal trays rattling to the ground. And then, Harry hears someone shout his name. “Harry,” he hears, like it’s a scream coming from afar, and also a whisper in his ear.

His whole body freezes. “Zayn?” he asks, panting, while Zayn still fucks his brains out. “Did you hear that?”

Zayn only answers by grabbing Harry’s hips with his hands. “The only thing I wanna hear right now,” he grunts, “is that sound you make when you come on my dick.”

And well, it’s not like Harry can ever deny Zayn anything, in their current position.

He starts to match Zayn’s thrusts by thrusting his own hips backwards, and Zayn grunts again, losing his rhythm a little as he gets closer and closer, and Harry isn’t better off, because he starts to feel heat boiling in the pit of his stomach.

Zayn bucks his hips only three more times, and the next moment Harry’s coming, moaning Zayn’s name as his orgasm washes over him with a force that has Harry’s legs give out, and the hands he’s got propped against the locker slide down.

Zayn holds him up, thrusts one more time, and then he comes too, spilling in the condom and biting down on Harry’s shoulder, while they both bend over, Zayn’s chest plastered to Harry’s back even through the fabric layers of their tops.

They stay like that for a moment, breathing raggedly and trying to recover. Harry’s vision has gone white for a moment, and this has probably been one of the most powerful orgasms he’s ever had in his life. It’s because it’s Zayn, and it’s obviously because they _shouldn’t_ be doing this here.

“You okay, doc?” Zayn asks after a while, when they both manage to disentangle and they make sure the other’s hair and face is presentable.

Harry chuckles, drying a bead of sweat from Zayn’s temple with his thumb. “I’m peachy and well-fucked,” he replies. “And now I’m gonna think about your dick while I work.”

Zayn grins. “Good. Go do your job, and we’ll see what we can do about you thinking about my dick when our shifts are over.”

Harry laughs, and they both wear their uniforms—Zayn has a whole white uniform, with shirt and pants and even crocs, while Harry just has his white coat to sling on top of his normal clothes—and they get out of the locker room.

Harry heaves a relieved sigh when he sees no one’s in the break room yet. Zayn winks at him. “Told you it was safe. We ain’t gonna be the new Olsen and Parker, doc, don’t get your knickers in a twist,” he says as they also get out of the break room, going for the stairs.

Harry remembers then, hearing the weird sounds and his name being called. “What’s upstairs, at the end of the corridor?” he asks Zayn as they climb the stairs.

Zayn shrugs. “The abandoned east wing,” he says. “It used to be an oncology research wing, like, a year ago. Then the government cut the funds for the hospital, and there was no money to keep that wing going, so it’s been abandoned ever since. Why?”

Harry shakes his head. “Nothing. I thought I heard something coming from that direction, earlier.”

Zayn hums. “Maybe my dick made you hallucinate,” he winks. “Or maybe there are ghosts around the building.”

Harry rolls his eyes, and punches Zayn in the shoulder for good measure. “Shut up, Zayn,” he mutters, feeling his cheeks go on fire while Zayn only snickers.

“So, you and Zayn, huh?” Louis grins from the couch.

Harry has to use all his training to keep his expression neutral. “What do you mean, Louis?”

Louis laughs. “Did you know that I was a cop? Before… this?” he says. “You’re not the only one who knows how to read people, doctor Styles.”

Harry arches an eyebrow and doesn’t reply, and Louis waits just a couple seconds before laughing again. “Nah, just joking. Niall and Liam told me that you were going at it in the locker room earlier today.”

Harry’s stomach turns unpleasantly. Of course Louis is not psychic, and there are no ghosts telling him about what’s going on in the hospital, but then how does Louis even _know_ about that?

Harry clears his throat, and decides that it’s better to just indulge Louis a little bit. “And how did Niall and Liam know, Louis? Let’s say that I was really in the locker room today. I’m afraid I didn’t see anyone else in there.”

Louis sighs and stares at Harry for a moment before replying. “That’s exactly what you should be, doc. Afraid.”


	2. Tired

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zayn blinks twice, and then sighs. “Harry, you’re ti…”  
> “I’m tired, not _crazy_ , Zayn!” Harry exclaims.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Usual disclaimer: I don't know or own any of the characters present in this work. I only own the plot and any eventual original character.

Harry sighs, trying to reach behind the nape of his neck to massage the muscle there. It’s been hurting the whole day, and it’s not just because of the extremely rough sex he had with Zayn in the locker room in the morning. It’s also because Harry can _feel_ how tense he’s been the whole day.

He’s not making any progress with Louis. His delusion seems to be evolving, instead of receding, and Harry still doesn’t fucking know what is exactly going on with his patient.

It’s not schizophrenia. It’s not PTSD, although it most certainly plays a part in Louis’s disorder. Harry privately thinks that PTSD is just the _less_ that could have happened to him, after witnessing the death of his friends and surviving.

Zayn has also said it, he remembers as he sits at his desk in his office. _I can’t even imagine what the poor lad’s gone through, watching his friends die when he barely got a scratch._ Harry still thinks that the damage Louis has suffered is just as bad as any physical injury, but he agrees with Zayn nonetheless.

It’s already dark outside, the clock on his laptop reading 19:34. He should go home and resume the next day. But how can he do that, how can he let it go when he feels so much like he’s _failing_ his patient?

Harry’s also a bit daft, because there’s a part of him that doesn’t want to go home yet because he wants to wait for Zayn, whose shift ends at half past seven as well.

They haven’t talked about what they’re doing yet. Harry doesn’t want to rush it or be pushy in any way, but it’s been two weeks, and he can’t help but start wondering if Zayn really just wants the fucking.

But Harry isn’t exactly sure what he himself wants either, so there’s that.

He just knows that maybe he’d like it, if they became something more. Harry can’t help but overthink stuff, as Zayn himself always reminds him with his grins and chuckles, but he forces himself to stop, for now. He knows it’s absurdly soon, and they’re adults. These things take time, he reckons. He can’t exactly know, since he’s never had a relationship that could really be called one.

What he knows is that he enjoys spending time with Zayn. He enjoys the fucking, and he enjoys the easy talking. He’ll take what comes, for now.

Harry sighs again, and his eyes fall again on Louis’s folder on his desk. Despite having decided to stop thinking, he can’t help but open it.

There’s no diagnosis in the folder, because Harry, again, hasn’t been able to elaborate one yet. If the late doctor Perez, whose place Harry took, hadn’t been able to diagnose Louis in the eight months she had him in treatment, then there was no chance for Harry to succeed in barely three months.

In the folder, however, there’s a detailed recounting of Louis’s symptoms. Panic attacks and verbally violent outbursts. Fragmentary sleep often accompanied by extremely vivid nightmares. And then, of course, the whole delusion about seeing and hearing the ghosts of his two dead best friends and colleagues, added by Harry at the end of the notes.

Harry also has a police report about the crash, which he managed to obtain from Louis’s former co-workers from the police department. Louis used to be a detective. His team was composed by himself and detectives Niall Horan and Liam Payne.

They were working on a case that day, a year earlier. The three of them had a lead and got into their car, with Louis at the wheel. They didn’t stop at a red light, and it resulted in a frontal accident with a truck. The trucker got out of it with just a broken wrist. Niall and Liam died on the spot, while Louis lost consciousness but otherwise didn’t get hurt. When he awoke, his co-workers told him Niall and Liam were dead. Louis had a mental breakdown—first of a long series—but recovered quickly, or so it seemed. Until he started telling people that there were _things_ going on around him, that he could hear voices, noises, that _something_ was wrong.

He then proceeded to have another, quite serious mental breakdown when he started working on that same case again. And that was the episode that had him admitted at St. Catherine’s. There are no details about the case, because those three were very private with open case documentation, and now that Niall and Liam are dead, and Louis is interned, nobody even knows _where_ to look for their work. But Harry was able to gather enough info from his colleagues to know that it was about sales of illegal medication, and maybe even organ trafficking.

Harry’s still hopeful that one day he’ll manage to make Louis better, and if not heal him completely, at least make him good enough that he’ll be able to leave the hospital.

There’s a picture in the folder that never fails to break Harry’s heart a little bit, despite his training not to get personally involved with his patients. It’s Louis, Niall and Liam on the job, wearing their shades on top of their heads and their badges hung on their belts, hugging and smiling for the camera.

Niall Horan was Irish, with peroxide blonde hair and blue eyes. Liam Payne had a buzzcut and an eye-crinkling, warm smile.

_I had a good life, doc. Before all this, I mean_ , Louis sometimes tells Harry during their sessions.

It nags at Harry so much, sometimes. That Louis looks perfectly sane and conscious most of the time.

Harry hears laughter and stomping coming from the corridor, and he frowns. He wonders why the hell a kid—one of the patients from paediatrics, most probably—is running free in that wing of the building. He stands up to go open the door, but right that moment he hears a loud bang from the window behind him, like someone just slapped their hand against the glass, and the light goes off in the room.

Harry screams and jumps, the files he’s holding in his hands slipping away and flying all over the table in a messy clusterfuck of documents.

He can feel his heart beating loudly in his fucking throat, and his breath is ragged. He didn’t imagine it, did he? There was a bang on his window.

The problem is that Harry’s office is on the third floor.

_I’m just tired. I need to go home_ , he tells himself.

But when he finally manages to look at the window, he sees a clear handprint there on the glass. It’s there, perfectly visible because of the darkness inside and outside of the studio.

Harry stumbles backwards, his hands feeling the wall and looking for the light switch. “Is someone here?” he asks, feeling stupid, because of course there’s no one there.

There’s no reply, and no more sounds. Harry finds the light switch and flicks it, and the light returns. _How did it even switch off? Maybe there’s something wrong with it_ , he thinks, flicking the lights on and off a couple times. He leaves them on at last, and looks at the mess of papers on his desk, sighing and starting to organize them again.

The picture figuring Louis, Niall and Liam is on top of the pile, face-down, so that Harry can see the back of it. He frowns, because there’s a note on the back of the picture, but he’s pretty sure that the back of the photograph has always been blank.

Harry picks it up, and reads it. _S ndr_ , it reads.

“How have I not noticed this before?” Harry mutters, trying to figure out what those letters mean.

“Harry?”

Harry shrieks and jumps again, immediately turning towards his door, which is now open, with Zayn frowning at him from the threshold. “Harry, babe, you okay? I thought you’d gone home, but then I heard you scream.”

Harry nods, taking a deep breath. “Yeah, just thinking,” he replies, sliding the picture back in Louis’s folder with the rest of the documents. “I just heard… I…” he tries, feeling a bit batshit and then dropping the sentence.

Zayn sighs and takes a step inside the office. He’s not wearing his uniform anymore, just a sweater and black skinnies, and Harry kinda wants to hug him, but he doesn’t. “What’s wrong, Haz?”

Harry shakes his head. “There was, like, a banging on my window,” he says at last.

Zayn arches an eyebrow. “We’re on the third floor, Harry.”

“I know, I know, but look, Zayn, there’s even a handprint on the glass!” he exclaims, pointing at the window, where the handprint is indeed still visible.

Zayn hums and gets closer to the window, and then chuckles. “You’re tired, Harry, and you probably had too much coffee as well today. This handprint is probably yours, because it’s on the _inside_ of the window, see?” he says with a warm smile. “Maybe you touched the window at some point and you only saw the handprint now, and it’s raining cats and dogs outside, so you probably just heard thunder. And you’re tired and should already be home, so it fucked a lil’ bit with your head.”

Zayn is making all the sense in the world, so Harry nods. “I’m supposed to be the shrink here,” he mutters, with no heat behind his words, but secretly feeling better now that Zayn is reassuring him that he’s not, in fact, batshit.

“You’re also supposed to unwind at the end of your shift,” Zayn comments, quite seriously. He reaches for Harry, standing behind him and gently placing his hands on the muscles between Harry’s neck and shoulders, squeezing lightly.

Harry groans in pleasure and then snaps his mouth shut, embarrassed. At the same time, another thunder roars outside. _Yeah, it was definitely a thunder, then_ , Harry thinks with a sigh.

Zayn chuckles. “I’ve looked at you today. Your neck and shoulders hurt, right? You’re extremely tense.”

Harry nods. “It always happens. When I’m stressed,” he slurs, closing his eyes and enjoying Zayn’s hands on him, even if this is eons away from a real massage. “My neck and back get all fucked up.”

Zayn hums. “Then what about,” he almost whispers to Harry’s ear, “we go back to my place, get some food in your belly, and then I give you a real massage? I’ll have you know that I always had a penchant for physiotherapy, even though I decided to just become a nurse.”

Harry’s heart flips a bit at that, because it almost, _almost_ sounds like Zayn doesn’t just wanna fuck that night. “Just a massage?” he asks.

Zayn doesn’t reply for a moment, but then he chuckles, squeezing Harry’s shoulders a bit harder. “I can also fuck the back pains out of you if you want, babe.”

Harry shouldn’t be sad about it, but maybe this day really did fuck a bit with his head. Either way, he knows Zayn’s default setting is joking about them having sex, and Harry’s not in the right state of mind to demand a heartfelt talk about what they are, at the moment.

So he sighs, and leans a little more into Zayn, who holds him close, Harry’s back to his chest. “Okay, Zayn,” Harry whispers. “I’m definitely up for a sexy massage from you.”

Zayn takes a breath and chuckles. “See? You ain’t going crazy, doc. If you’d refused, _then_ I would have thought you were mental,” he answers smugly.

Harry laughs more honestly at that comment, and they both leave the office. Zayn is the one turning off the lights, and he closes the door after taking a glance at the dark, empty studio.

As they both go down the stairs and then pass by the break room to reach the exit, Harry remembers something else that kinda upset him that day. “Zayn? Do you, uh, do you think you could talk to your night colleagues and make sure they properly lock the patients’ rooms?”

Zayn frowns, opening the exit door for Harry as they both step outside. “What do you mean?”

“It’s just… Louis was out of his room early this morning.”

“That’s impossible, babe,” Zayn answers, opening his umbrella and then grabbing Harry by an arm, to pull him closer so they’re both covered. “My night colleagues know how to do their job. They’d never forget to double-check the rooms, especially those in the psychiatric wing.”

“But Louis _was_ out of his room, Zayn,” Harry insists. “He told me that… that he knew you and I were fucking in the locker room earlier today.”

Zayn pauses, but just for a second. “Did he say that he… saw or heard us?” he asks, worried.

Harry shakes his head as they make a run for Harry’s car first. “No. He, uh, he said that Niall and Liam told him. Which is of course not true, and that means he heard us himself. It’s not safe for patients to wander around the hospital, Zayn. Especially if they reached a staff room, unsupervised and unnoticed.”

“Fuck,” Zayn breathes out then. “Yeah. Yeah, you’re right. I’ll talk to my colleagues. Thanks, you know, for like… not making a fuss about it.”

Harry shrugs. “That’s why I asked you to talk to them. I know sometimes nurses are a bit… mistreated. It was an accident I’m sure. But I don’t want it to happen again.”

Zayn nods, and holds the umbrella for Harry as he opens his car and gets behind the wheel. Once Harry’s safely inside, Zayn smiles at him. “See you at my place?” he asks, and it’s tentative, almost like Zayn’s worried Harry’s not in the mood anymore.

But Harry really, _really_ doesn’t wanna be alone today, and he most certainly doesn’t wanna say bye to Zayn yet. “Yep,” Harry replies, grinning and popping the ‘p’. “I believe I was promised food and a massage.”

“You can bet on it, doc,” Zayn grins before staring at Harry one more second, and then making a run for his own car, parked just some feet away from Harry’s.

The parking lot faces the side of the building where Harry’s office is, and Harry’s eyes run to his window almost on their own accord. There’s a flash of lightning and another thunder, and Harry sees a light flicker in his studio, like someone’s in there playing with the light switch.

His stomach churns, but when he looks closer, he realizes it’s not _his_ window. It’s one of the windows on the floor above, which is plain impossible, since that’s the abandoned wing of the hospital.

_It’s just the lightning, Harry, get a fucking grip_ , he tells himself, and starts the car.

“Why don’t they, ah, repurpose the old abandoned east wing?” Harry asks, groaning mid-sentence when Zayn’s hands press on a particularly stiff spot in his back.

They’re on Zayn’s bed, Harry on his stomach and Zayn straddling him, giving him the massage he promised.

Zayn hums. “There’s not enough money, Haz. Which is the reason they closed the wing in the first place.”

“Hm,” Harry hums. “I guess they would have demolished the place if they could have. But it’s right in the middle of the building.”

“Yeah,” Zayn runs his hands right under Harry’s shoulder blades. “Why are you thinking about the east wing?”

“I dunno,” Harry almost moans under Zayn’s touch. “Earlier when we left the hospital. For a moment I could have sworn I saw a light turning on and off in that wing,” he adds. “But as you said. I’ve had a shitty day and too much coffee.”

Zayn chuckles, and doesn’t reply for a while. He just keeps gently—but not too gently—kneading the muscles in Harry’s back, with the right amount of pressure and pain, and Harry kinda sees stars, but he’s also kinda feeling better. And kinda aroused, yeah.

“Your back’s all kinds of fucked, Harry,” Zayn says seriously after a moment. “You should get more massages. Like, regularly.”

“Are you offering?” Harry grins, with his face half-buried in the pillow.

Harry can’t see Zayn’s face, but when Zayn lowers himself on Harry and speaks to his ear, he can _feel_ Zayn’s own grin spreading. “What do I get in return? ‘M not a charity, am I?”

Harry laughs and squirms until he manages to turn on his back keeping Zayn on top of him. They’re both just in their underwear, and they’re both half-hard, have probably been since Zayn started massaging Harry’s back. “Why, isn’t the well-being of a colleague of yours enough?” Harry asks, chuckling.

Zayn laughs openly, and then lowers himself on Harry one more time, their lips just a breath away from each other. “You’re not just a colleague, doc,” he whispers, and even though he’s still smiling, his tone feels serious.

Harry’s heart thumps a bit louder, because that’s more than he managed to get out of Zayn _ever_ , and it’s not exactly an admission, but it’s enough for now. So Harry wraps a hand around the nape of Zayn’s neck, and brings him closer, kissing him as slowly and dirtily as he can, sliding his tongue inside Zayn’s mouth and smiling when he feels Zayn sigh and his dick twitch.

Zayn lets Harry kiss him for a while, but then interrupts it, and frowns a little. “Ain’t you gonna ask me what I mean, how I mean it, and a thousand other things as you usually do?”

Harry laughs, and shrugs. “I stopped thinking for today,” he declares proudly.

Zayn also laughs, and maybe Harry just imagined his eyes falling a little for a split second. “Good,” Zayn says at last, and goes for Harry’s lips again.

They snog for what feels like an eternity, neither of them moving to do more, but eventually they can’t restrain themselves anymore, and their hands start roaming up and down each other’s torso, and soon Zayn’s hand is in Harry’s boxers, wrapping around his hard dick, and tugging. Harry does the same to him, until they’re both panting and sweating, and finally, _finally_ , Zayn hastily opens his nightstand drawer to look for a condom.

He rummages a bit in there, and then stops kissing Harry, groaning. “Fuck,” he says. “I’m out of condoms. How _much_ did we fuck in the past days?”

Harry laughs. “A lot,” he assures Zayn, wiggling his hips so that Zayn will get off him. “Don’t worry. I’m sure I have some in my bag.”

Zayn lets him go with a reluctant sigh, and Harry stands up from the bed, reaching the chair by Zayn’s desk, where he left his backpack. He feels Zayn’s hungry stare on him as he opens the backpack and excavates among his folders, notebooks and laptop, looking for his wallet.

He finds it at last, but that’s not the most pressing matter now.

Because, stuck in between the pages of his notepad, he also finds something else.

It’s the picture. The one with Louis, Niall and Liam.

And Harry’s sure, _extremely sure_ , that he put it back into Louis’s folder, which currently lays _in his office_.

Harry’s hands start to shake so violently that the pad falls from his grasp. It lands on his right foot, the corner of the thick, leather-bound notebook stabbing him painfully, but Harry doesn’t even register the pain.

“Harry?” he hears Zayn call him. “Hazza, babe, are you okay? What’s wrong?”

Harry doesn’t reply, not until Zayn reaches him and bends over, retrieving the notepad and then grabbing Harry by the shoulders to make him look at him. “Harry, babe, what’s wrong?” he asks again.

Harry’s voice comes out all wrong when he tries to answer, so he just hands the pic over to Zayn. Zayn looks at it, frowns, and then looks at Harry again, questioningly. “What’s this?”

“A picture. A picture that I’m sure I left on my office desk. But now it’s here in my bag. In my notepad. I didn’t put it there, Zayn.”

Zayn blinks twice, and then sighs. “Harry, you’re ti…”

“I’m tired, not _crazy_ , Zayn!” Harry exclaims.

Zayn flinches, and even though he doesn’t back off, Harry immediately regrets his outburst. He takes a deep breath and presses his thumb and index on his closed eyelids. “Sorry, sorry,” he says. “I didn’t mean to scream. It’s just that I’m _sure_ I left this in my office, Zayn.”

Zayn sighs again. “Okay. Okay. But, Harry… being sure of something doesn’t necessarily mean it actually happened, right?” he slowly says. “And of course I’m not saying you’re crazy. I’m just saying that you had a majorly shitty day, and you were exhausted when we left your office. Maybe you put the picture in your bag with your other things, and then you forgot about it. It happens. It’s like, I dunno, when unlock my phone to look at the time, and then I forget the numbers I read two seconds later and I gotta look again.”

Harry, despite it all, chuckles at that. “Yeah,” he agrees at last. “Yeah, you’re right. Anyway. I found what I was looking for,” he adds, finally retrieving the fucking condom from his wallet.

Zayn sighs again. “You’re too tired. We should just sleep. We don’t need to…”

“But I want to,” Harry interrupts him, decidedly. “I have to unwind at some point, right? So, unwind me, Zayn.”

Zayn stares at Harry for a long, long time. Then he sighs for the umpteenth time, takes the condom out of Harry’s hand, and starts to back him up towards the bed. “Okay, babe. Whatever you want.”

Harry sees Zayn’s eyes fall a little, but he can’t think about that too, not right now. So he just kisses him, and when Zayn pushes him on the bed and straddles him, he goes easily.

Harry wakes up feeling even more tired than the day before, and it’s not because Zayn fucked him into the mattress for hours on end, last night.

He hasn’t managed to sleep that much, and even when he did sleep, he had weird nightmares figuring the hospital, Louis, his dead friends, and hands banging in the window of his office.

He blinks and sighs, and he wishes he could just fall back asleep, but he doesn’t have to work today, and he remembers he promised his sister to hang out for lunch.

The clock on Zayn’s beside table reads 10:30. He still has time, but he has to get up if he wants to shower and drop by his place to get a change of clothes. Harry realizes that it’s almost been an entire week since he last slept in his own apartment. What is he really doing with Zayn? _This doesn’t exactly look like fuck-buddies to me. We have dinner and talk and sleep together._

Zayn is still asleep, but when Harry tries to carefully extricate himself from the arm he’s got slung around his torso, Zayn mumbles something and tightens his grip, effectively preventing Harry from moving. Harry sighs at just how _good_ it feels, when Zayn pulls him closer again, Harry’s back plastered to his chest, and Zayn’s lips warm and soft as he breathes against the nape of his neck. “Don’t go, you’re too comfortable,” Zayn murmurs quietly.

Harry chuckles. “I have to. Gotta meet my sister. And you should also get up, eventually. Your shift starts in an hour.”

Zayn hums. “Not today. I switched shifts with Andrea. She’s got her three-year-old sick with the chicken pox, and she wanted to be home during the night in case the kid needs her. So I took her next two night shifts and she got my day ones.”

Harry turns to face Zayn at that, finding him still with his eyes closed even though he’s clearly awake. _Very_ awake, he realizes by the way Zayn’s dick is poking him in the leg. “Zayn,” he says sternly.

“What?” Zayn mutters.

“You had three whole months of night shifts. You shouldn’t take any more for a while. You know. Your sleep schedule’s gonna be fucked, and…”

“It’s just for the next two nights, Hazza. I’m gonna be fine, I promise,” Zayn interrupts him, smiling with his eyes still closed, and pulling Harry even closer against him.

Harry sighs. “Don’t overdo it,” he warns anyway.

“The only thing I wanna overdo right now is you,” Zayn grins, finally opening his eyes and bucking his hips against Harry.

Harry feels his own eyelids flutter for a moment when their erections catch, because of course that’s all it takes him to get hard, it’s like Zayn only has to _look_ at him and he’ll be good and done.

Nonetheless, Harry takes a deep breath, and although he lets Zayn climb over him to straddle him, he doesn’t move to initiate anything. “Zayn?” he says instead, looking up at him, the gorgeous cut of his cheekbones and his eyes still half-lidded with sleep, one side of his face still a bit red and wrinkled from his pillow-case.

“Yes, Harry?” Zayn sighs with an eye-roll, but he also has a smile that looks fond on his lips.

“Can we talk about… this?”

Zayn frowns, his whole body going rigid on top of Harry, from his legs bracketing Harry’s hips to the hands he’s propped on the pillow on either side of Harry’s face. “You wanna stop doing this?” he asks, like he’s actually _scared_ about it.

Harry energetically shakes his head. “No, no! Of course I don’t wanna stop this. But what’s _this_ , Zayn? I’m not actually sure I know exactly what we’re doing, and I know it’s very soon and I don’t wanna push you in any way, but I kinda need to know because I think I care about you, and if I’m the only one feeling like this, then I need to know,” he says, immediately regretting the too many words leaving his mouth, regretting being so open about what he’s feeling.

Zayn doesn’t answer for an awfully long second. Then, he chuckles and shakes his head. “The only one,” he mutters like he can’t believe Harry said that. “I thought this was all you wanted, Harry,” he then adds, and Harry kinda hates the small frown Zayn’s still sporting.

But he’s not gonna take back anything he said, now. “Tell me what _you_ want,” he says, kinda demands.

Zayn looks at him in the eyes, and opens his mouth to speak, but right then Harry’s phone goes off with the ringtone he set specifically for Gemma. “Fuck. It’s my sister,” he says.

Zayn nods, licking his own lips. Harry gets distracted by the gesture, his eyes falling to Zayn’s mouth, and he kinda thinks he’s an arsehole because Zayn isn’t moving to let him answer his phone, but he doesn’t exactly want him to. “What about,” Zayn breathes, “you go have your lunch with your sister, and I go to work tonight. And tomorrow when you come to the hospital, when my shift is over and yours hasn’t started yet, we talk? I have many things I wanna talk to you about. Not all of them are just about us.”

Zayn looks so _serious_ while he says that, and Harry’s a bit worried, but it’s also more than he hoped for. He honestly just expected Zayn to shake his head and tell him he just wanted to have fun. But Zayn really looks like he _needs_ to talk about this as well, whatever _this_ is, so Harry will take it.

He nods, his phone finally stops ringing. _Sorry, Gems, I’m on my way I swear_ , he tells her in his mind, even though it’s not exactly true. “Okay, Zayn. We can talk tomorrow,” he agrees.

Zayn smiles. It’s a bit blinding, because it’s not his wicked grin, and it’s lighting up his whole face, and Harry kinda wishes Zayn would always smile like that, possibly _at him_. “Good,” Zayn whispers on Harry’s lips before kissing him, open-mouthed and dirty, his hand snaking between their bodies until it’s wrapping around Harry’s dick, and Harry realizes he’s been rock-hard for who knows how long.

“Zayn,” he breathes, tries to roll his eyes, but fails because the rest of his body arches into Zayn’s touch like it wasn’t waiting for anything else. “I really need to go.”

Zayn tuts, his lips latching onto Harry’s pulse point. “You need to come. And then you can go,” he declares.

It’s eleven p.m. when Harry finally gets home from his day with Gemma. Lunch turned into an afternoon of mindless shopping and then drinks in a bar close to her place, and Harry’s beyond tired, but he’s also happy. He hasn’t spent a day with his sister in ages, both of them always too busy with work.

He checks his phone while he gets undressed, intentioned on taking a shower and then going to sleep. It feels a bit weird, being in his own apartment by himself at night, when he’s spent most of the last two weeks at Zayn’s.

There’s a text from Zayn on his phone, received more than an hour ago. _Hospital’s so quiet. If you were here we could fuck on the reception desk and nobody would notice._

Harry snorts a laugh, because he knows he’s been a bit reckless with Zayn in the hospital—although only once—but he also knows there’s no way either of them would actually be _so_ inconsiderate.

Nonetheless, he types a reply. _Oh? Damn. Should have taken a night shift myself then._

He chuckles and gets under the shower, sighing when the warm water sloshes over his tired back muscles. He hums a song to himself while he washes his hair, and hears his phone ping with another text. It’s probably Zayn replying, and Harry rolls his eyes at himself when he realizes he’s doing everything quicker so he can be done with the shower and go read Zayn’s text.

_You’re fucked_ , he tells himself, but in five minutes he’s done and out of the shower anyway.

When he opens Zayn’s text, though, his stomach churns painfully, because the tone is completely different. _Harry can I call you? I’m sorry I should wait for tomorrow to talk to you in person but I need to tell you now cos there’s something going on here and it’s not good._

Harry’s frantically dialling Zayn’s number as soon as he finishes reading the text, his heart beating loudly in his throat. The call goes through, but Zayn doesn’t pick up.

“Come on,” Harry grunts when his phone stops dialling, a ‘No answer’ message popping up. He imposes on himself to calm down. There’s no need to freak out, right? Zayn just asked if they could talk on the phone about an apparently urgent matter. Nothing bad is happening. Right?

The phone vibrates in his hand, and Harry thinks it’s Zayn, but when he looks at the screen, it’s the hospital’s number.

He answers. “Doctor Styles.”

There’s an agitated intake of breath on the other side. “Harry? It’s Sandra Haynes.”

“Sandra? What’s wrong?”

“Harry, I’m sorry I’m calling you at this hour, but you have to come to the hospital right now,” she says, her voice shaking. “It’s Louis. Louis Tomlinson. He killed a nurse.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter (or this story in general) doesn't exactly have a holidays vibe, but anyway, it is my holiday present for all of you guys! I hope you're staying safe and enjoying some coziness.  
> Seeing that this period of the year is always hectic, I _might_ be late with posting the next chapter, but I'll do my best.
> 
> As usual, let me know what you're thinking :)


	3. Witness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Harry trips three times on the hospital’s entrance stairs, feeling his heart come out of his eyes as he runs._

Harry trips three times on the hospital’s entrance stairs, feeling his heart come out of his eyes as he runs.

When he finally manages to push the doors open and gets inside the building, he sees no one around except a nurse at the desk. A nurse that isn’t Zayn.

_Zayn was supposed to be at the front desk tonight. Where is he? Why isn’t he picking up his phone, why why why?_

The nurse, Faulkes says his nametag, stands up from the desk and walks towards Harry. He’s a couple inches shorter than Harry, and he looks very pale. “Doctor Styles,” he just says.

“What happened?” Harry demands, his voice coming out all wrong.

The nurse gulps down some air. “I don’t know much, I’ve been here at the front desk all night, but something happened on the third floor. There’s police there as well.”

Harry almost grabs him by the shoulders to shake him, but then manages to hold himself back. “Why? Why are you here at the front desk? Nurse Malik was supposed to be here!”

Faulkes nods. “I know, I know, but he asked me to cover the front desk for him because he wanted to be the one making sure the patients’ rooms in the psych ward were locked, and then something happened there and I don’t…”

Harry doesn’t even let him finish, and runs up the stairs as fast as he can. _Zayn Zayn Zayn no no no._

When he gets to the third floor, there’s chaos all around.

Or, well, not chaos, but many people. He barely has time to catch sight of Sandra and a couple more nurses talking to a police officer before he hears the screams.

It’s Louis, shouting at someone to let him go. Harry looks around, frantically, but he can’t see Louis anywhere. He realizes, though, that the commotion is coming from the end of the corridor, where the stairwell to the basement is.

Harry doesn’t think, and he just makes a run for those stairs.

A policeman sees him, and promptly gets in his way. “Sir, this is a crime scene. I’ll have to ask you to stay back.”

“LET ME GO! I’M NOT CRAZY! I DIDN’T DO ANYTHING!” Louis shouts from the stairs, and at the same time more people shout over him.

Harry takes a breath. “My name is Harry Styles, I’m the psychiatrist following Louis Tomlinson,” he says as calmly as he can, showing his hospital badge to the policeman. “I demand to know what happened, and to see my patient. It’s his right.”

“Harry?” Sandra’s voice reaches him. When he tears his gaze from the police officer, he sees her and the other two nurses— _Angela and Brian, Zayn told me they worked night shifts with him, where is he where is he where is he_ —approach them.

The policeman sighs. “Doctor Styles, a nurse has been murdered an hour ago. We’ve been called by doctor Haynes here, who witnessed the whole ordeal.”

Harry looks at Sandra. Her green eyes are very big in her face, and her normally perfect bun is all fucked up, like she repeatedly dragged her fingers through her blonde curls. She nods. “It was Louis, Harry, I’m sorry. He pushed a nurse from the railing and into the stairwell over there.”

“Who?” Harry just asks, feeling his legs shake.

Nobody replies for a moment.

“WHO DIED?” Harry screams, and he has to use all his strength not to let the tears pooling in his eyes fall.

“LET ME GO!” Louis screams again, and before anyone has the chance to fucking reply to Harry’s question, Harry sees Louis being brought up the stairs by two officers holding him tightly by both his arms. They jostle him a lot, because he’s resisting. “JAMES, ANDREW, LET ME FUCKING GO!” he screams, calling the officers by name. And of course he does, Louis used to be a cop, and these people are the people he _worked_ with a year earlier, Harry can figure it out by the sad tilt of the officers’ mouths, like they don’t really want to do this, like they wish to be anywhere but there, arresting a former co-worker, maybe even a friend.

“What the _fuck_ do you think you’re doing, exactly?” shouts another voice coming from the stairwell, and Harry’s legs finally give out when he recognizes it. He sags against the wall, not being able to help it.

It’s Zayn, running up the stairs right after the officers and Louis, and he’s livid.

Livid, and _alive_. “This is a patient, a _mentally ill_ patient, and you can’t just fucking _arrest_ him and take him away from the hospital!” he screams. “I’m gonna have _all_ your heads for this, just you wait until I call doctor Styl…” he doesn’t finish the sentence, because he then sees Harry.

Sandra sighs. “It’s Magda Reynolds, Harry,” she says at last, her voice latched with grief. “Magda’s dead.”

Harry feels like an arsehole, because rationally, he knows that a death is still a death. He’s just _so glad_ that Zayn’s fine that he has to do his best not to run to him and hug him, kiss him, touch him everywhere to make sure he’s really okay.

“Doc?” Louis says, shaking like a leaf, with sweat matting his hair and eyes as big as saucers as he still struggles in the two officers’ grip. “Doc, I didn’t do anything. Please believe me. I’m not crazy. I’m not.”

Harry takes a deep breath, and detaches himself from the wall he used as support when his legs abandoned him, trying to regain his composure and think quickly. _This is my patient. I need to figure this out_. “Nurse Malik is right,” he says at last, because it’s true. “My patient cannot be taken into custody like this.”

“He _killed_ Magda, Harry!” Sandra exclaims. “We should…”

“He didn’t.”

It’s Zayn who has spoken, more quietly than any other person in the corridor, but his serious tone is enough to plunge the whole wing of the hospital into silence. Harry stares at him, but Zayn isn’t looking at Harry right now. He’s looking at Sandra. “He didn’t,” he repeats, coldly. “I was right at the bottom of the stairwell when Magda fell. I saw the whole thing happen. And there was no one next to her. Louis was there too, it’s true, but he was on the stairs, not by the railing where Magda was. So what exactly _did_ you see, doctor Haynes?”

Harry’s stomach sends a wave of nausea up his throat as he sees Sandra gulp down some air and then stutter a little. “I mean, I saw Magda and Louis on the stairs, and Louis has obviously gotten out of his room without anyone noticing, and Magda was trying to take him back, and they were both screaming, and then Magda…” she says, sighing and stopping.

“Did you _see_ detect... Louis Tomlinson _push_ the nurse, doctor Haynes?” one of the officers asks, slipping and almost calling Louis ‘detective’. “Because your colleague here explicitly said that he saw the nurse fall while Tomlinson was too far away to have pushed her.”

Sandra takes a deep breath. “It all happened so fast, I didn’t exactly _see_ it, but she couldn’t have just fallen by herself, could she? And Tomlinson is mentally unstable, and…”

“My patient has never been physically violent,” Harry interrupts her as coldly as he can. “Never. He has never shown any tendency to assault, if you don’t count verbal assault.”

One of the officers holding Louis, despite the tragic situation, chuckles briefly. “Nothing has changed then,” he declares.

Louis rolls his eyes. “Shut your mouth, James,” he mutters, but it’s almost fond.

Harry clears his throat. “If there isn’t any proof that my patient did this, and there’s also a witness who is declaring that he _didn’t_ , I have to ask you to let him go _right now_ ,” he says.

The two officers look at the one who originally tried to stop Harry from reaching for Louis, and he nods at them. Immediately, they let go of Louis. Zayn moves to reach him, probably to accompany him back to his room, but he’s stopped by the officers who say something about having to take his statement, and Sandra’s and the nurses’ as well.

Harry nods at Zayn, trying to tell him _Don’t worry_ with his eyes, and then gently grabs Louis by an arm himself, steering him towards the end of the corridor where his room is.

“You believe me, doc, yeah? For real?” Louis asks in a whisper when they’re far enough.

Harry doesn’t reply. He really wants to believe Louis and trust Zayn, but the only thing his brain seems to focus on right now is the fact that nurse Magda really couldn’t have just fallen beyond the railing and into the stairwell by herself. The railing is too tall.

“I know what you’re thinking, doc,” Louis says when they’re in his room at last.

Harry sighs. “What am I thinking, Louis?”

“That Magda couldn’t have just fallen from the railing,” he replies. “She didn’t.”

Harry’s insides twist, but he keeps his face in check, and he sits on the bed next to Louis. “What are you saying, Louis? Can you tell me what happened? How did you get out of your room?”

“Magda let me out. She wanted to kill me. She brought me to the stairwell and tried to push me down. Niall and Liam saved me. They pulled me to the stairs so I’d be safe, and then they pushed _her_ from the railing. They’re not bad, doc, I promise. They just did it to save me.”

Harry sighs again, not being able to help a desperate grunt, and he presses his fingertips on his eyelids, because what the fuck was he thinking, that Louis would actually give him a _real_ explanation? “And why did Magda want to kill you, Louis?”

“Because I know something. I know something, but I forgot because I’m a bit fucked in the head. Same as Niall and Liam. They also know, but they don’t remember because they’re also a bit fucked in the head. But that’s why you’re here, doc, isn’t it? To help us. They trust you as well.”

Harry looks at Louis in the eyes, and the thing that worries him the most is that Louis looks completely and utterly _sane_ despite all the crazy things he’s saying. “Why do you think they trust me?”

“They’ve been speaking to you, doc, haven’t you realized yet? They told me. About the picture and the window in your office, and saying your name sometimes. I know it’s not much, but it’s the best they can do from afar. You have to go _there_ if you want them to tell you more.”

When the last sentences leave Louis’s mouth, Harry feels his whole body freeze, because how can Louis know about _that_? The only other person that knows about Harry freaking out about those things is… well, Zayn. But Zayn would never go and tell Louis, _a patient_ , about it. Would he?

“There where?” Harry asks Louis nonetheless.

“The east wing. The abandoned one. That’s where they’re stuck. They can’t wander too far from there. That’s why they can only try to catch your attention the best they can in this corridor. Because it’s the closest to the abandoned wing. But they can’t properly speak to you, not unless you go there.”

Harry sighs. Maybe he’s never gonna figure out what’s really wrong with Louis. Maybe it’s just what he himself said. _He’s fucked in the head, plain and simple, and I can’t help him_.

Harry doesn’t exactly know what to do with himself after Louis is safely back in his room, the door locked, and sleep already taking over him after the last frantic two hours or so.

Part of him just wants to go home. But another, bigger part is still bothered by a lot of things, first and foremost the fact that Louis gave him a detailed recounting of all the ‘weird’ things that happened in the last few days. And again, the only person Harry told about that stuff is Zayn.

_I have so many things to tell you. Not all of them are just about us_ , Zayn had said that morning. What did he mean? Is there… more?

Harry shakes his head and looks around the corridor. It’s not swarmed with police and hospital staff anymore. There’s just a couple officers at the top of the stairwell where nurse Reynolds fell, keeping watch as two other people in dark uniforms—the coroner, Harry realizes with a shiver—bring up the body, to take it away.

Harry watches as they transport Magda Reynolds’s body on a stretcher, the corpse completely sealed in one of those grim, black zipped bags.

One of the officers who were once friends with Louis sees Harry, frozen in the middle of the corridor, and he sighs, nodding to his colleagues before stopping to talk to him for a moment. “Doctor Styles,” he just says.

Harry nods. “What’s gonna happen now?”

The officer—his name is Patterson, it’s written on his uniform—sighs again. “We took statements from everybody who was around here at the time of the event. We were able to gather enough information to confirm that detective Tomlinson is indeed innocent until proven guilty. There is a witness who is willing to testify in court that he saw the whole thing happen, and Louis wasn’t involved.”

_Zayn_ , Harry thinks, not bothering pointing out that officer Patterson slipped again, and called Louis ‘detective Tomlinson’. _I wish I could tell you that he’ll be detective Tomlinson again one day, but I can’t_ , he also thinks.

Harry nods.

“Doctor Haynes was a bit shocked, the victim was her friend,” Patterson says warily. “So, between me and you, I kinda understand her eagerness to blame the only other person she saw on the scene. I shouldn’t be telling you this, but there you have it, I guess.”

Harry nods again. “I understand what you mean,” he says honestly. Sandra doesn’t know anything about Louis apart from the fact that he’s mentally ill, and she just watched her friend fall in a stairwell and die. Harry can cut her some slack. Probably. If now she stops accusing his patient when even she herself isn’t sure what she actually saw.

_What_ did _you see, though? What did Sandra see? What did Zayn see?_

“I’ll leave some officers in the building for security reasons, and we’ll open a case. We’ll keep investigating and we’ll get to the bottom of this. Did you mean what you said, doctor Styles?”

“About what?”

Patterson sighs unhappily. “About Louis never being violent. He never was, before. But now… it’s like he’s another person. Did you mean it?”

“Yes,” Harry replies as firmly as he knows how, because he _did_ mean it, still does. “My patient never showed any signs of being physically violent. I highly doubt he would start now, so suddenly and without any external provocation,” he then adds, because again, someone died, and he needs to be honest.

Patterson nods, but Harry notices that he doesn’t write down Harry’s words, not like an officer asking questions would. “If Louis is involved in any way, we’ll find out the truth,” he then tells Harry. “For now, he’s innocent. Take care of him, doctor Styles. He was the best detective in our precinct. Tomlinson, Payne and Horan are sorely missed,” he almost murmurs, his eyes leaving Harry’s, dropping to the floor like it’s costing him a lot to even say those words.

Harry understands, and he wants to reply that he will take good care of Louis, but he never manages to speak, because a huge fuss comes from the end of the corridor in that moment, like there’s people stomping their feet and banging on doors.

Only the noises come from the door leading to the abandoned east wing, and officer Patterson doesn’t seem to hear anything, because he doesn’t flinch, doesn’t frown, doesn’t ask.

Harry’s stomach lurches painfully, bile rising up his throat as he does his best to smile at the officer while they part ways. The next moment, Harry’s alone in the corridor, with cold sweat running down his spine, and deafening noises coming from the dark end of the psychiatry wing.

It’s right about then that he hears something else as well. “HARRY,” someone screams and hisses right in his fucking ear. “LISTEN,” the voice whispers.

Harry turns, whimpering when he distinctly feels someone’s lips brush his ear, but he’s alone in the corridor.

_Am I losing my mind?_ , he wonders.

He rationally knows that he hasn’t slept, he’s tired, and he also had a fair share of booze while he was hanging out with his sister.

Rationally, he also knows he should go home.

Instead, he takes a breath, and starts walking towards the end of the wing, where the lights are turned off, and the abandoned east wing begins.

He doesn’t get far, anyway. He knows the abandoned wing is directly connected to the psychiatry ward by a set of unused stairs, to which one can access through a steel door that used to be locked with a code, but not anymore. Harry’s seen the door in broad daylight, and there’s no number pad next to it anymore, so he guesses he’ll just have to finally try and turn the handle.

When he reaches it now that it’s night, he can barely make out its shape in the darkness, because when he tries to flick on the light switch, of course the lights in that side of the building don’t seem to work. Harry sighs, feeling his guts twist in… what? Fear? Worry? Anticipation? Is he going there because of the noises, or because part of him really wants to believe Louis? Is he going crazy?

He shakes his head, and runs his hand on the doorframe. He frowns when he finds the handle, presses it, and the door opens, just like that. _This isn’t safe. Any patient could open this door and wander off in a fucking abandoned wing of this hospital. I gotta tell someone to do something about this door_ , he thinks, _maybe Sandra. She’s the head physician of the hospital. She’ll have to do something._

Nonetheless, Harry silently opens the steel door, and goes beyond the threshold.

He hasn’t ever been there, but Zayn has told him loads about the structure of the building, so Harry already expects the set of unused, dusty stairs going down and leading to another door, this one looking way bigger and better sealed than the first one. That’s the door to the actual former oncology research department.

What he doesn’t expect, though, is to find Zayn there, sniffling and breathing raggedly, with a hand gripping the doorframe and his forehead pressed against the door. Harry’s at the top of the stairs and he doesn’t dare move, he just looks at Zayn while he gives him his back, oblivious to Harry’s presence.

“You have to stop,” Zayn says like he’s really begging someone. “You’re scaring him. He isn’t sleeping well at night, and he thinks he’s going mad. You have to leave him alone. You said you trust him and that he’s gonna help. If you keep scaring him like this, he’ll never be able to help anyone. Not even Louis. Don’t you get it?”

Harry doesn’t dare move a muscle. Who is Zayn talking to? There’s no one there.

“I know you just wanted to protect Louis. But you… you killed someone. This has to stop. And you have to leave Harry alone,” Zayn keeps speaking, keeps sniffling like he’s trying very hard not to cry. “I… I care about him. Please.”

It’s so stupid, that among all the incomprehensible things Zayn’s muttering, that’s the thing that makes Harry’s heart race the fastest. Once the confession—is it a confession? Zayn’s talking to himself, for Christ’s sake, is he going crazy as well?—leaves Zayn’s mouth, Harry can’t manage to be still anymore, and he takes in a sharp breath, which gives him away.

Zayn gasps, and abruptly turns towards the stairs. Their surroundings are just lighted by the ugly green emergency lights nailed along the walls, and in that lighting his eyes are big and his cheekbones more pronounced, like some kind of frightened ghost or spirit. “Harry?” he says, his voice breaking.

Harry gulps down some air. “Zayn?” he replies. “Who… who are you talking to?” he then asks, slowly and calmly, like he’s talking to one of his patients having a breakdown, and the thought almost breaks _him_. The thought that maybe there’s something wrong with Zayn as well, and with _himself_ , with _everybody_.

Zayn’s lovely mouth opens and closes on nothing twice, and then he chuckles, patting his pocket. “I was just on the phone,” he says. “I was a bit upset after what happened, I called my mother. I needed quiet and this was the closest silent spot.”

He’s blatantly lying, but Harry finally figures out what’s wrong, and he almost wants to kick himself for taking so long. _He just fucking watched someone die. He said that he saw everything and he was at the bottom of the stairwell when Magda fell. He saw everything. The fall, the bones breaking, the blood. He’s in shock._

Harry sighs, taking two steps down the stairs, slowly approaching Zayn. “There’s no signal here, Zayn. I know you’re lying.”

Zayn’s breath hitches. “Harry, I…”

“It’s okay, Zayn,” Harry says, managing a smile. “Let’s get out of here, yeah? We can talk for a while.”

Zayn blinks. His eyes look like they’re abnormally sparkling under the harsh, green lights. Then, he chuckles and shakes his head. “You think I’m shell-shocked. You’re using your shrink voice at me.”

Harry sighs. “I just wanna make sure you’re okay, Zayn. Please? Let’s get out of here and talk?”

Zayn doesn’t reply for a moment, and then he slumps his shoulders, like he’s giving up, and he starts climbing the stairs towards Harry. “Yeah, doc, okay. Let’s go talk. As I told you this morning, I have things to tell you anyway, and not all of them are just about us.”

They don’t speak much as they keep walking, but they silently agree to go outside. The sun is starting to rise, weakly illuminating one of the benches installed along the little park in front of the hospital. Harry has never seen many people around that small patch of green grass, but sometimes, from the window in his office, he can spot the nurses taking a quiet stroll there, accompanying the patients that can actually go out of their rooms for a while. Some of the kids from the paediatrics wing, the ones that are not stuck in bed; some of the elderly patients in their wheelchairs; and even some of the less difficult patients from the psych ward. Harry himself has even walked Louis through those paths lined with flowers, on some of his good days.

Zayn heaves a sigh and sits on the sun-bathed bench. He’s not wearing his nurse uniform anymore, just an ACDC t-shirt under his leather jacket, and his black, ripped skinnies. His side-shaved hair, which he normally ties back in a topknot, is now loose, drawn back on one side of his head, and it’s a bit frizzy because of how much he drove his own fingers through the black locks.

Harry sits next to Zayn, watching him pat his pockets until he finds his packet of cigarettes and lights one, exhaling the smoke and then waving to disperse it when he realizes the light breeze is blowing it all in Harry’s face. “Sorry,” he murmurs.

Harry shakes his head, thinking that Zayn rarely smokes when they’re alone. “It’s okay. Second-hand smoke doesn’t bother me that much. When I was still shadowing the psychiatrist who supervised me, sometimes we let our worst patients smoke if we knew it calmed them down a little.”

Zayn chuckles. “Sometimes I let Louis smoke one of mine when he’s allowed to take a walk around this park and I’m his designated supervisor. I know I shouldn’t. But I don’t think a cigarette’s gonna hurt him more than… all the rest.”

There are many implications, in Zayn’s short sentence, but Harry catches them, because it’s his job, and because he thinks that by now he kinda knows Zayn a little. “You care a lot about Louis, don’t you, Zayn.”

Zayn shrugs. “He’s been here under my watch for a year, babe. I know I’m not supposed to get personally involved with the patients. But after such a long time watching him get… _worse_ , and _worse_ , I can’t exactly help it. The whole ‘stop thinking, unwind and resume the next day’ is bullshit, lemme tell ya.”

“Yeah,” Harry chuckles more honestly. “I know. Never actually been able to do that, I’m afraid.”

“Really? I never noticed,” Zayn chuckles too, jokingly mocking Harry.

Harry pauses for a second, but now that the subject is open, he needs to address the problem. “Nonetheless, Zayn,” he says seriously. “You can’t talk to Louis as if he was a normal friend of yours, you know that.”

Zayn takes a drag from his cigarette, and frowns. “What do you mean?”

“You told him things, didn’t you? About… about me. You told him about the things I was freaking out about. The window in my office, the noises, even the picture. I can’t have that, Zayn. It’s not good for my job, and it’s not good for Louis either.”

Zayn raises his eyes from the ground at that, and even though he’s utterly beautiful, with his whole perfect face bathed by the pink of the dawn, his eyes are narrowed into slits and he looks shocked and hurt. “I didn’t tell Louis _shit_ , Harry,” he says coldly. “I’m not stupid.”

Harry sighs. “Then how did he know, Zayn? You’re the only person I told about those things.”

“Yeah,” Zayn admits, slumping his shoulders and sighing defeatedly. “But I’m not the only one who _knows_.”

“What do you mean?”

Zayn gulps down some air and takes a deep breath. His eyes fall away from Harry’s again, and he stares at the ground as he stubs his finished cigarette and promptly lights another one. Harry knows it’s bad, but he doesn’t stop him, and patiently waits. “Niall and Liam,” Zayn says at last.

Harry curses internally, not being able to help the frustrated sigh that escapes his lips, and he closes his eyes, massaging his temples with his index and thumb. “Zayn, what are you saying?”

“Niall and Liam, babe,” Zayn repeats, louder. “It’s them. I’m sorry I let you think that you were seeing things just ‘cause you were tired and all that shit. You weren’t imagining stuff. They’re here. They’re real.”

Harry gets scared, in that moment. Because he knows that Zayn had a majorly traumatic night, and that’s why he’s making little to no sense, but the thing is that Zayn looks like he actually _believes_ what he’s saying, like he’s been believing that for quite some time, and that’s _bad_. “You underwent trauma tonight, Zayn,” Harry says quietly anyway. “You rationally know that…”

“Harry, I’m serious, listen to me!” Zayn snaps, his cigarette falling from in between his fingers as he turns his body on the bench, to properly face Harry at last. He grabs Harry’s hands, and squeezes them tight. Zayn’s own hands are cold, too cold for the mildly nice weather, and the sweat on his palms is also cold. “Please, Harry. I’m not in shock and I’m not crazy. And… and neither is Louis, babe. He’s got many problems, yeah. But he’s not hallucinating, never has.”

“Zayn, how can you honestly expect me to bel…”

“The window in your office, Harry!” Zayn exclaims. “You said it yourself. _Someone_ banged on your window. There was a _handprint_ there, for Christ’s sake. You showed it to me. It was on the _inside_ of the window.”

“Yes, and when I showed you, you made me realize that the handprint was probably mine, because I most certainly touched the window at some point, but I only saw my handprint when the light went off and the lightning flashed outside,” Harry retorts calmly, feeling his guts melt. _What if what happened tonight_ ruined _him? What if he just slipped through my fingers, and I’ll never be able to help him? Trauma can be irreversible. Is he irreversibly broken?_

“It wasn’t your handprint, Harry,” Zayn shakes his head. “It wasn’t.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Because I have the size and shape of your hands seared in my fucking brain since the first time you touched me, Harry,” Zayn retorts, his breath punching out of his mouth and his eyelids trembling. He doesn’t interrupt their eye contact, though. “Your hand is bigger and wider than the handprint on your window. And the picture, Harry. Those random letters on the back of it haven’t always been there, have they? Do you honestly think you’d have missed them for three months, since you started treating Louis? And then the pic appeared in your bag, last night at my place. But you said it yourself. You never put it there.”

_How can I believe you? I can’t, I can’t, I can’t._ “And you made me realize I must have stuffed it in my bag when I gathered my things to go home.”

“But you didn’t, Harry. Your bag was already closed and ready when we left your office, do you remember? You never put _anything_ in it. Explain that.”

Harry doesn’t know what to say, so he doesn’t reply. He replays all the weird things that happened in his mind, but what’s he supposed to do, believe in _ghosts_?

_I’m a doctor. A man of science. Believing in the supernatural is not in my DNA._

But Zayn is in a clear state of shock at the moment, and Harry has to find a way to help him. “Who were you talking to, earlier at the entrance of the old oncology research wing?” he asks.

Zayn chuckles unhappily. “To _them_ , babe. Niall and Liam. Did you hear what I was saying? Did you hear, Harry?”

Harry nods, trying to school his features into neutrality, because Zayn is probably about to have a breakdown, if the way his eyes are abnormally widened is any indication. “I heard you talk about me.”

Zayn nods too, brushing his face with his hands. “I’m sorry. We should have been talking about _us_ this morning. And I’m sorry you overheard because I wanted to tell you to your face. That I do care about you. You’re not just good sex to me, Harry, and if you ever thought that I thought that, I’m sorry about that too. I was just scared I guess. My relationships never last. Everything is fine and dandy until I trust the person enough to tell them about what’s going on in the hospital, and then they dump me because they think I’m just as batshit as my admittedly favourite patient. So I never asked you for more than casual hanging out, and I pretended the _things_ in the hospital weren’t happening. But they are happening, Harry, and I do want _more_ with you. You believe me, right?”

Harry takes a deep breath, but he doesn’t reply, he can’t, even though his stomach unknots a little when Zayn finally admits that he does want _more_ for the two of them. But Harry can’t bring himself to nod or speak, because how can he really _believe_ all the rest?

Zayn’s big, warm eyes widen some more, and the breath he exhales is accompanied by a bitter chuckle. “You don’t,” he states. “You don’t believe me either.”

“Zayn, I…”

“No,” Zayn interrupts Harry coldly, and he pulls away from Harry when he tries to grab his hands. Zayn stands up, shaking his head. “You don’t believe me, Harry, and I can’t stand the way you’re looking at me right now. Like I’m a nutcase. Like I’m one of your patients.”

“Zayn, you’re not making any sense!” Harry exclaims, standing up as well. He doesn’t want to shout at Zayn, not now that he’s in such a fragile state, but he can’t help it, because much like Louis, Zayn looks completely and utterly _sane_ as he speaks about spirits and ghosts haunting the hospital.

“I _am_ , Harry, and so is Louis. You never managed to diagnose him, did you? Do you wanna know _why_? It’s ‘cause the things he sees and hears are not part of his mental condition. They’re real. Look at me in the eyes and tell me that Louis and I look crazy, Harry.”

Harry doesn’t say anything, but he also can’t hold Zayn’s gaze anymore, so he drops his eyes to the ground, and sighs.

Zayn sighs too. “I’m sorry I made you think you were just imagining things, Harry. But I can’t do anything anymore, not now that I know you don’t fucking believe me. So now I’m gonna go, and I won’t bother you again. I can’t stand looking at you and realizing you think I’m fucked in the head, because I’m sure I’m not.”

Zayn takes a step back, and Harry would very much like to stop him and hug him, but he knows his touch is not welcome to Zayn anymore, and something just broke between them. The knowledge breaks his heart.

Right that moment, Harry hears a rattling noise coming from the building. When he raises his eyes, looking at the row of windows of the abandoned wing just by sheer reflex, he thinks he’s really going nuts as well, because he sees a flash of peroxide blonde hair behind a window, and then he hears it and _sees_ it rattle, like someone was banging on it. “HARRY, LISTEN,” a voice screams and hisses.

Harry doesn’t react. But when he turns to Zayn, he’s also looking at the same spot, his face blank and his forehead creased. “Harry, listen,” Zayn then says, and Harry’s legs give out. He falls sitting on the bench.

Zayn looks at him for one more moment, and then turns on his heels, and walks away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know what you're thinking :)


	4. Session

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Harry knows how to talk to people, how to get to them. He’s good at his job, and that’s the only thing he can say for himself. So, he talks to Niall and Liam._

“I’m sorry, doc,” Louis sighs when they start their session, that afternoon.

Harry smiles. “What are you sorry about, Louis?”

“That you fought with Zayn because of us.”

Harry sighs heavily, and he shouldn’t show what he’s feeling to Louis, but he can’t fucking help it as he massages his own temples with the tips of his fingers. He’s worried about Zayn. He hasn’t replied to any of Harry’s texts since he walked away from him that very morning at dawn, his shoulders slouched and his head reclined like the fact that Harry didn’t believe him physically hurt him.

And again, Harry’s also worried about Louis. It’s starting to become more than a little weird, that Louis always knows things that happen to Harry, even though he’s never present to witness them.

_There has to be a logical, rational explanation_ , Harry keeps telling himself, but every time he does, he’s reminded of the whispers, the noises, the “Harry, listen” being hissed in his ear like there’s _someone_ constantly breathing on his neck, even though _nobody_ is there.

“Who is _us_ , Louis?” he asks anyway, cursing the defeat he hears in his own voice.

Louis shrugs. “Me, Niall and Liam. I’m sorry they scared you. I told them to be less… invasive, if they really wanna talk to you. But they’re a bit batshit as well, like me. And since Magda tried to hurt me, they’ve gotten a bit worse. But I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for you to be sucked into this mess. You’re a good lad.”

Harry knows when to indulge Louis and when not to, and right now he knows he shouldn’t. But he does anyway, holding back the umpteenth sigh. “Can you try and remember why Magda would want to hurt you, Louis?”

Louis doesn’t answer for a long time, so long that Harry actually gives up on getting an answer, but then he speaks at last. “We don’t remember much. Something went… _wrong_ , in my head, when the accident happened. Niall and Liam too, but they remember more than I do. They went a bit crazy when they realized that I was being accused of what _they_ did. But then they calmed down when they saw our former co-workers. They remember Patterson, and James and Andrew as well. They understood that Patterson would do everything in his power to make sure I wouldn’t be unjustly accused. And I kinda think they were also just glad to see them in general. Liam said that it was about time some more detectives finally set foot in this hospital, you know, since the last time we were all here. When they were alive.”

Harry’s pen almost flies out of his hand, but he tightens his grip on it, and frantically scribbles _Their old case_ on his notepad. “Louis?” he then says, quietly. “Were you here before? Before you were a patient?”

Louis nods. “Yeah, yeah. With Niall and Liam. Investigating.”

Louis has _never_ , not even _once_ , given any sign that he actually remembers any detail about the last case he was investigating with Liam and Niall at the time of their death. Harry knows that it was about the production of some kind of illegal medication, and what if… “Did your last case involve _this_ hospital, detective Tomlinson?” Harry asks, as firmly as he knows how, because if Louis’s memory can be jogged, then it means his last case is more important than Harry originally thought.

It does the trick, it seems. Because Louis immediately sits up straighter, his gaze infinitely more clear, and when he speaks, it’s not just Louis Tomlinson The Patient speaking. It’s also Louis Tomlinson The Detective. “Yes,” he says surely. “Me and my team, composed by myself and detectives Payne and Horan, were investigating on the illegal sale of a new medication that supposedly cured cancer. Such a thing doesn’t, of course, exist, so when we realized that the medication was quite consistently sold on the black market, we opened a case. The few leads we had pointed at this specific hospital, and even more specifically, to the brand new government-funded oncology research wing. Me and my team were in this building quite a lot. Investigating. That’s when the patients started to die.”

Harry is shocked, but he doesn’t move a muscle and he doesn’t utter a sound, because this is the first time that he’s hearing Louis speak this lucidly, and even though Harry can’t trust a word he says, it all comes out so naturally and _sanely_ out of Louis’s mouth that Harry can’t do anything but _listen._

_Harry, listen_.

Louis keeps speaking. “We made friends with a fair number of cancer patients during our time here, the ones with rooms in the new oncology ward. Three of them had been here the longest. Peter, Olly and Jessica. We knew everything about their conditions. All three of them had lung cancer, last stage. Then, one morning, we showed up at the hospital, and Peter had died. He was fine the day before, or well, as fine as a last stage cancer patient can be. Niall was devastated. He’s always been the worst of us at not making it personal. He asked to see the body. They showed it to us, and told us that there had been a sudden match for a transplant, but sadly Peter didn’t make it, and died on the operation table. Do you wanna know what the problem was, doc?”

Harry nods.

“Peter had been patched up after the surgery had gone south, and he had one single wound on his chest, where they tried to transplant his new heart, they said. Peter had lung cancer, doc. Lung. Not heart.”

Harry stares at Louis, and even though he’s giving him all his attention, he also thinks about Zayn. Zayn has repeatedly told Harry that Louis isn’t crazy. And in that moment, Harry has to rationally agree with him, because Louis has never looked more lucid. In the back of Harry’s mind, there’s a tiny voice, the voice of Harry Styles The Psychiatrist, that whispers _You never managed to get info about his last case from him, and you assumed that he didn’t remember. But whenever Louis actually didn’t remember stuff, he always said as much. He never really told you that he didn’t remember his last case, did he? And what if he always did remember it, but didn’t trust you enough to tell you? What if he trusts you now because his ghost friends do as well? He might be delusional, but what if_ this _is his way to cope with something_ more _that actually happened to him?_

Harry writes it down. Louis doesn’t comment on that, and he keeps speaking. He’s never spoken this much. “We knew something was off, so we pretended to believe them. We changed our profile. We started investigating Peter’s death instead of the meds. In secret, nobody had to know, not even our colleagues. Then, Jessica and Olly died as well. They were children, doc. Jessica was eleven, and Olly was fourteen. And they died, just like that, just like Peter. During a liver and kidney transplant. Liver and kidney they didn’t _need_ , and we knew, but nobody else knew we knew. We made the connection after Olly died. But they didn’t know, they couldn’t know, they couldn’t couldn’t couldn’t,” he repeats obsessively, his hands starting to shake wildly all of a sudden. “More patients died like that. We couldn’t take it anymore, we had to do something. So we did. We did something. We tried. We made a mistake, a big mistake, a huge fucking mistake, I’m so fucking stupid, I should have known, fuck fuck fuck,” he adds frantically, shaking his head.

_No no no_ , Harry thinks, realizing Louis’s moment of lucidity—if it even _is_ lucidity—is slipping away. “Who is _they_ , Louis? Who is it you didn’t want to know? And what was the connection you made? What mistake did you make?”

Louis violently shakes his head. “I don’t remember, I don’t remember, Niall and Liam remember, you have to listen, Harry, listen listen listen, Zayn told you I’m not crazy, but I am, aren’t I, I’m fucked in the head, but _this_ is the truth, you have to _listen_ …” he rambles.

Harry stands up from his desk, and slowly approaches Louis, sitting next to him on the couch. “Louis, look at me,” he says quietly, so quietly that Louis will have to calm down his ragged breathing to catch his words. “I’m listening to you. What do you want to tell me? What else do you remember?”

Louis grunts and buries his face in his hands. “It’s not _me_ you have to listen to, Harry!” he screams. “I don’t remember! You have to listen to _them_!”

Harry gets out of his session with Louis with a pounding headache, and many questions buzzing in his skull.

As he mechanically makes his way back to his office, he passes by the break room, and catches sight of Sandra sitting at the table with her face buried in her hands, her shoulders shaking.

Harry sighs, feeling his heart constrict a little, and quietly enters the room. “Sandra?” he gently says.

Sandra gasps and immediately raises her head, her eyes big in her face. When she sees Harry, she sniffles and relaxes, averting her gaze and fixating it on the table in front of her.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Harry asks, because they’re not exactly friends, but they’re co-workers, and he just doesn’t have it in his heart to leave her alone after she watched her friend die.

Sandra nods weakly. “I’m sorry, Harry. For… for accusing your patient even though I wasn’t a hundred per cent sure what I saw.”

“It’s alright, love. You were in shock. Everybody was. What’s important is that nobody has been unjustly blamed, and the police is gonna get to the bottom of this. Yeah?”

Sandra nods again. “I’ve known Magda for ten years, Harry. She’s been with me through thick and thin, same as Angela and Brian, I don’t know if you know them, but they’re the main nurses in the oncology ward.”

“I know their faces, but I’ve sadly never spoken to them. I’m afraid I rarely have time to speak to anyone who’s not my patient.”

Sandra sniffles, but her face hardens a bit when she replies. “But you speak to Zayn Malik, don’t you,” she says coldly.

Harry doesn’t move a single facial muscle. “What do you mean by that?”

“I’ve seen the two of you getting closer and closer in the past few weeks. I know it’s none of my business, I’m sorry,” she answers, sighing and shaking her head. “But I didn’t like the way he spoke to me in front of the police, Harry. I’m the head physician of this hospital, and I’m owed more _respect_ than what Malik has ever shown me. I don’t like to be defied.”

Sandra doesn’t exactly speak in a mean tone, but she’s clearly trying to contain more anger than what Harry thinks would be appropriate. In the light of all that happened that night, Harry thinks it’s extremely petty and wrong, to be angry about a nurse contradicting his superior in front of the police.

“Zayn was just doing what he thought was right, Sandra,” he says as calmly as he can. “He saw the whole thing play out, and he couldn’t let Louis be accused when he knew he didn’t do anything. I’m sure you can understand that.”

“Did he really _see_ that, though?” Sandra insists, her voice shaking as she stands up and paces around the room. “I’m never here in the psych ward, Harry, but the whole hospital knows that nurse Malik has a soft spot for Tomlinson. What if Zayn is _lying_ , Harry?”

“Zayn would never lie like that,” Harry answers. “He might have a soft spot for my patient, but he would never lie about a _murder_.”

_You, on the other end, Sandra. You didn’t fucking hesitate pointing your finger at Louis, did you?_

There’s a deafening rattling of metal coming from the end of the corridor, and Harry is a bit proud of himself for not flinching in the slightest. For a brief, wild moment, he thinks he sees Sandra react to the noise, though. He stares at her, and she at him, but the noises stop abruptly a second later, and then Sandra sighs defeatedly, like she’s immensely tired. “I’m sorry, Harry,” she says for the umpteenth time. “You’re right. I don’t have any reason to doubt Malik, do I?” she says, although Harry’s almost completely sure she doesn’t exactly mean it.

Nonetheless, he nods. “No, Sandra. You don’t. And if it makes you feel any better, I vouch for him too.”

Sandra, at last, smiles a bit. “Yeah, Harry, thanks. I feel better now,” she says, and she’s lying, Harry can tell.

He doesn’t know what else to say, but he’s spared when Angela and Brian show up in the break room as well. “Sandra? Did you…” Angela starts speaking, but she snaps her mouth shut as soon as she realizes Harry’s there as well.

Both the nurses look extremely pale and tired, with bags under their bloodshot eyes as they mutely flit their gaze from Sandra to Harry, from Harry to Sandra.

Sandra smiles. “Hey,” she says quietly. “Yeah, I’m ready. I just got caught up talking to doctor Styles a little bit. But I’m ready, we can go home and hope this horrible day is finally over.”

The two nurses nod. Harry frowns a little when he realizes they don’t just look tired. They look… _scared_.

_What if I’m not going crazy? What if they all heard the noises too, and they’re pretending not to? What if Zayn is right? What if I really just try to stop thinking and_ listen _for once?_

Harry keeps his composure as he says goodbye to Sandra, Angela and Brian. He pretends to be busy going through his notepad while he sits at the table and they remove their uniforms and coats before finally leaving.

Harry lets five minutes go by, looking at the open door of the room, where the corridor is scarcely illuminated as usual, and completely silent, which is less usual by now.

He takes a deep breath, and retrieves his phone from his pocket, opening Zayn’s chat and staring at the row of his unanswered texts, various versions of _Please Zayn can we talk_.

He types one more text. _You were right, something is wrong. I don’t know if it’s exactly what you believe is wrong, or something else entirely, but I decided to listen for once, and trust you. I’ll go check out the abandoned east wing. If you see any of your ghost friends, tell ‘em this is their chance to show up._

Harry hits send, but he doesn’t wait for a reply. He just pockets his phone again, and after taking another deep breath, he starts walking towards the door leading to the east wing.

The door is still unlocked, and again he thinks he should tell Sandra to do something about it. It creaks a bit ominously when Harry opens it, and Harry rolls his eyes at himself when he realizes his palms are sweating and his heartbeat is accelerated. _Calm the fuck down. You know this is stupid. There’s nothing in here_ , he tells himself as he goes down the set of stairs bathed in the neon green emergency lights, the same stairs where he heard Zayn talk to himself next to the actual east wing door.

He sees the door, now. It’s big and also made of steel, with a thick handle placed on top of the lock. Much like the first door, there’s no numeric pad next to it, and the spot where it used to be is shaped as a square, with holes that were once the nails holding it together.

When Harry turns the handle, he does so almost defeatedly. But the lock clicks, and Harry holds his breath as he pushes the door, opening it, just like that.

“What the fuck…” he mutters. It’s completely dark, and he can feel that he’s entering a corridor, because he extends his hands and feels the walls on each side of him. There’s no light switch, and he’s sure that even if he finds one, it’s not gonna work.

Something rattles, almost giving him a heart attack. It’s the sound of bottles clinking, or something made of glass anyway. “Hello?” he says, his voice shaking wildly, just like his hands and legs.

Harry eventually finds the light switch.

But he also feels _someone’s_ fingers already there.

He screams, and someone else screams as well. In the same instant, the light switch flicks on, and a flickering light illuminates the room.

And the two people standing in front of Harry, their eyes huge in their pale, pale faces.

The first pair of eyes is blue. The second is a warm brown.

“Fuckin’ hell, doc, scared the _shit_ out of me,” Niall Horan says.

Liam Payne punches him in the arm. “Shut up, Ni, we kinda deserve it after how much _we_ scared _him_.”

Harry screams, stumbles backwards, and ends up against the wall, distinctly feeling the pain in the back of his head when he hits it.

Then, all goes black.

“Harry? Harry, wake up! Fuck, tell me you’re okay, please please please, come on.”

“Did we kill him? Oh God. We killed him, didn’t we? We didn’t mean to!”

“Calm down! Gonna give yourself a coronary.”

“I’m _dead_ , Liam, I can’t _have_ a coronary. Oh my God we killed the doc. Is he gonna be stuck here with us? What’s he gonna do? Oh, Jesus.”

“Shut up! And if you killed him and he was stuck with you, it would only be good for you two. You fucking need a shrink, and a good one at that. Don’t look at me like that, I don’t care about your poltergeist-y scary eyes. If he’s dead I’m gonna fucking _kill_ you myself!”

Harry tries to blink. There’s a lot of voices, a lot of noises and shrieks, and someone’s definitely holding his face and gently patting him on the cheeks. “’M not dead,” he only says, because somehow he feels like he has to clarify that first.

The person holding him gasps and shakes him lightly, which Harry wishes they didn’t. “Harry? Harry, open your eyes, come on, let me check your pupils. Do you have a concussion? Do you feel like throwing up?”

Harry manages to peel his eyes open, and when he does, he sees Zayn. He’s beautiful even under the flickering, broken lights of that damned abandoned wing. Harry’s lying down on the floor, with his head in Zayn’s lap, and Zayn is knelt next to him, his breathing laboured.

“Zayn?” Harry croaks, protesting when Zayn almost gauges one of his eyes out to check his pupils. “I’m fine, I’m fine. No concussion, I swear.”

Zayn sighs in relief. “Fuck. Yeah, you’re right. You’re fine.”

_Am I though? I heard and_ saw _things. Did I imagine them? Have I really finally lost it?_

Harry slowly sits up, groaning when his head pounds a little bit, and he presses his fingertips on his temples, trying to clear his head.

“I read your text,” Zayn says after a moment. “I mean, I read all of them, but I was pissed, so I didn’t reply. But when you told me you were gonna come here I fucking _ran_. What the fuck were you thinking, coming down here on your own? It’s _dangerous_ , Harry!”

Harry takes a deep breath, his eyes still struggling to adjust to the broken lights. “I thought… I don’t know. I wanted to check. And I thought I saw… something. But it was just my stupid brain making things up. Lack of sleep, too much caffeine, and all the things Louis says,” he explains, more to himself than to Zayn. “I conjured a very vivid image of Liam Payne and Niall Horan. They looked like _shit_.”

“I am extremely offended.”

Harry’s whole body freezes, because he’s looking at Zayn, and Zayn’s lips _haven’t moved_. Besides, Zayn doesn’t have an _Irish_ accent, does he?

He doesn’t want to, but he slowly turns his head anyway.

That’s when he sees the two figures crouched right next to Zayn, staring at him with glassy eyes and grey cheeks.

Harry screams and immediately jolts away, dragging his arse on the floor until his back hits the wall behind him.

He keeps staring, but the two men don’t disappear. They keep staring back at him, crouched next to Zayn.

Harry’s about to scream again and ask Zayn if he sees them too, but he hasn’t got a chance, because Zayn turns to the two men, and promptly punches Niall Horan in the arm. His hand goes _through_ Niall’s bicep. “I told you to shut up!” Zayn growls. “You scared him enough! Let me handle this.”

Liam Payne sighs. “Didn’t work that well the first time though, did it? He thought you were batshit as well.”

“But now he’s seeing you,” Zayn retorts through gritted teeth. “And I wanna avoid him tying me _and_ _himself_ in a straitjacket.”

Harry must certainly be dreaming. Maybe he fell and hit his head and slipped into a coma. Or he never even woke up, and the whole last twenty-four hours have been a dream. He tries pinching himself in the leg, but nothing happens except that Zayn notices the gesture and understands it.

He sighs, slowly approaching Harry walking on his knees, like he wants to pet a scared animal. Harry feels dangerously close to a scared animal in that moment. “Hazza, babe?” Zayn murmurs. “You’re not going crazy, and you’re not dreaming.”

Harry’s breath punches out of him in a gasp. There _has_ to be a logical explanation. “So these two are not dead? They’ve been, what, _hiding_ here for a year?”

Niall Horan rolls his eyes. “Fuckin’ hell, I swear I’ve never met someone as _stubborn_ as this lad,” he exclaims. “Yes, doc, we’re dead. Blown to pieces in our car. Blood all around. Skulls cracked open. All of that.”

Liam Payne whimpers a little and grabs Niall by an arm. When they touch, Liam’s hand doesn’t go through Niall’s arm like Zayn’s did before. “Why doesn’t he believe us? We did all we could. Everybody else believes. Why doesn’t he? We need him. We need him. We need him.”

Niall sighs and almost _tenderly_ pets Liam’s hair. “Don’t worry, lad, don’t worry. He believes us. He just doesn’t want to. He’s a lot like Louis, this one.”

Liam chuckles. “Louis. I miss him. He’s not safe. We killed. We saved him. Not for long, not for long.”

“Calm down,” Niall soothes him, even though his eyes are just as huge in his face, and he’s shaking. “Calm down calm down calm down.”

They start to slowly whisper and hush to each other, and Zayn sighs. “Jesus, this is a literal fucking loony bin,” he mutters before grabbing Harry’s hand. Harry lets him, frankly too dumbfounded to even try to retreat. “Hazza? Are you okay?”

Harry laughs, hysterically of course. “Okay? There are two _people_ here and they’re fucking _ghosts_ , Zayn! How can I be okay?”

Niall gasps. “He said we’re ghosts. He believes. He believes us. Do you, doc? Do you?” he asks frantically, landing on his hands and knees and starting to quickly cover the distance between him and Harry. It’s disturbing to watch, his figure crawling on the floor, because there’s something _off_ about his movements, like he broke all his bones and then they didn’t heal properly, like his junctures aren’t really working.

Harry starts and backs more into the wall, probably crushing Zayn’s hand in his own, and Liam sighs, grabbing Niall by the collar and stopping him with a brief shaking of his head. “Wait,” he just tells Niall.

But Harry does believe, is the thing.

Because there’s been something going on under his nose for months, not just in the past few days. There’s always been a weird noise, a weird scream, something changing place without anyone admitting to having moved it. The only difference is that when Harry sometimes asked, everybody told him nothing was wrong. Then, he met Zayn, and even he dismissed Harry’s questions at first, until he stopped doing it, and told the truth.

Harry recognizes the truth when he sees it, it’s his job.

And Zayn never lied when he told Harry about the ghosts.

Neither did Louis. Louis has his issues, but he’s always looked completely _sane_ while telling Harry about his ghost friends, and Harry thought it was because his delusion was irreparable and beyond help, constantly poisoning his mind.

The truth is that it wasn’t a delusion at all, and because Harry’s still a doctor, still a psychiatrist, that is now the main issue. “You’re telling me that I had my patient diagnosed from my very fucking first day here, and the rest was just him telling me the truth,” he says, and it’s not a question, but a statement. “He has PTSD, and that’s it. All the rest is _you_ ,” he adds, looking at the two emaciated men staring at him on their hands and knees, shoulders crushed, knees broken.

Niall nods. “Louis isn’t crazy. He watched us die and it fucked him up a little. But he isn’t crazy.”

“He’s fine but he’s not fine,” Liam adds with a ghastly giggle. “In danger. They wanna kill him. Kill him kill him kill him. Blood and bones. Make him go _splat_ ,” he mimics something falling on the floor and then a squelching sound, “Like they did with us. Made us go _splat_. Accident, they say. It wasn’t it wasn’t it wasn’t.”

_They’re also a bit fucked in the head, doc, but they remember more than I do_ , Louis had told Harry.

Harry looks at Zayn, and Zayn’s also very pale, although he doesn’t look sick and dead like them. Zayn gulps down some air, and then gently turns more towards Niall and Liam. “Who’s they, Liam? Who wants to hurt Louis? Who hurt _you_?”

_The accident they died in. Is this true? Were they…_ killed _?_

Liam laughs. “The bad ones! Magda!” he exclaims. “But she’s stupid. She knows we’re here. We can leave this wing. We’re stuck, but we can leave it for a while. We can go as far as the end of the corridor. We’re weaker but we can! That’s why we couldn’t talk to you, doc, and had to do the things. The creepy things. Window. Noises. Whispers. Picture.”

Harry feels his throat close off, but the only way to make _sense_ of this absurd turn of events is to stick to what he knows. If he needs to have a psychiatry session on two fucking ghosts, then so be it, he thinks shaking his head. “So Magda knew about you?”

Niall nods vigorously. “They all do. The bad ones. But Magda’s stupid. She lets Louis out because she wants to kill him, and she brings him _right here_ next to us, to the stairwell. We saved him. We didn’t mean to kill. But we did. We grab her and push her and down she goes. Louis is our friend. He’s alive. He has to live. It’s important that Louis is alright. He needs to be alright. You want to help him, doc. We know. That’s why we trust you. That’s why we talk to you.”

Harry looks at Zayn, and the whole ordeal replays in his mind. “That’s what you really saw?” he asks Zayn as calmly as he can. “You saw _them_ throw Magda down the stairwell?”

Zayn nods. They’re still holding hands, and his fingers are a vice-like grip on Harry’s. “Yeah. I’m sorry I lied. I couldn’t let Louis be accused, but I couldn’t tell the police I’d seen the two hospital ghosts kill her either. I’m sorry, Harry.”

Harry doesn’t answer for a while, his brain whirring as he tries to piece everything together, thinking thinking thinking, because there’s _something_ that is still off, and it’s not the fact that he’s actually believing in ghosts, poltergeists or spirits, whatever Niall Horan and Liam Payne are.

It’s something else.

_The bad ones._

_It was Louis Tomlinson, he’s mentally unstable._

_I don’t like to be defied._

_It all happened so fast, I didn’t exactly see it._

“You weren’t the only witness,” Harry tells Zayn, although, again, he’s talking more to himself. Zayn doesn’t reply, but Harry doesn’t want him to. He looks at Niall and Liam instead. “Can _anybody_ see you, if you show up?”

Niall nods, his neck making a sinister sound. “Everybody can see us! It’s funny. When I was alive, sometimes I went completely unnoticed. But now everybody can see me,” he giggles.

_So what_ did _you see, doctor Haynes?_

Harry takes a breath. “There was someone else there,” he tells Niall and Liam. “Someone else saw you kill Magda, apart from Zayn. Do you remember, Niall, Liam?”

Harry knows how to talk to people, how to get to them. He’s good at his job, and that’s the only thing he can say for himself. So he talks to Niall and Liam like they’re his patients, like he wants to help them, because deep down, he _does_ want to help all of them, and if he’s crazy, then so be it.

Niall and Liam gasp and crumble to the floor in a heap, screeching like something’s tearing their skin off, and it’s horrible to watch, the way they convulse and contort, the way they claw at their own faces like they want to tear themselves to pieces. Harry feels Zayn whimper and retreat into the wall, but now he’s not scared anymore, because this he knows.

_Patients having a breakdown._

He lets Zayn’s hand go, shaking his head when Zayn tries to stop him, to keep him away from the two agonizing spirits. When their eyes meet, though, Zayn must see something in Harry’s, because he sighs and finally lets him go.

Harry reaches Niall and Liam, his legs shaking, and crouches next to them. For the first time, he’s the one extending his hand to touch them.

He sets his hands on Niall’s shoulder, and then Liam’s. His fingers go through the layers of torn clothes, through whatever they’re made of, and it feels like putting his hands in a fucking freezer, but he doesn’t falter.

He feels like he isn’t touching anything solid, but Niall and Liam must feel the contact, because they gradually stop screaming and get a bit of their lucidity back. They raise a set of teary, blackened eyes at Harry, and Harry’s scared out of his wits, but it’s a fear he knows, on a level. _The fear of touching a patient who could harm me, and touching them anyway because this is what I do, this is what I wanna do._

“Niall, Liam,” he says quietly. “You want me to help you, right? You trust me. You reached for me. I’m here now. Tell me what you remember.”

Liam takes a broken breath, and whimpers, but he doesn’t avert his dead eyes from Harry’s. “It was Sandra Haynes. Sandra Haynes was there when we killed Magda. She saw us. She also knows about us.”

Niall nods. He’s also looking up at Harry, and Harry doesn’t let his face show what he’s thinking. “It was Sandra Haynes,” Niall confirms. “And, doc?”

“Yes, Niall?” Harry nods, knowing the ‘session’ is at its end, and after this he’ll have to let them rest not to break what’s left of their mind.

Niall gulps down on nothing. “Sandra Haynes killed us.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There won't be any update for some weeks, so I apologize. Following some personal issues, I have found myself in a sort of writer's block, from which I'll do the best I can to get out of. But, until that happens, I hope you can understand why I want to wait to post anything. I'd rather wait a while and produce something good, than just give a mediocre work to whomever spends time reading my stories. That said, I am sure it's not going to be a long time; I'm just going to take a few weeks to recharge, and then I'll keep going.


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